[Doug64]

July 22, Friday

By dawn outside Atlanta, only the vanguard of Hardee’s weary Confederate column has reached the assembly point, a place three or four miles southwest of Decatur known as Widow Parker’s farm. There, as the men come up during the morning, Hardee aligns his assault columns: four divisions abreast. It is nearly noon when Hardee finally launches his approach march. Now the men have to negotiate formidable terrain before hitting the Federals—a morass two miles long with a big millpond and undergrowth so thick that Hardee can’t “see ten paces.” But as Hardee’s divisions struggle to pass through the brier patches, losing their alignment, they at least seem to be heading for the right place. When Hood in Atlanta gets a dispatch from Hardee stating his readiness to attack, Hood jabs his finger at a map and exclaims: “Hardee is just where I wanted him!” Hardee has curved around McPherson’s left flank and is moving north and northwest—into the Federal rear.

Hardee is where Sherman least expects to find him. Sherman doesn’t anticipate another Confederate assault so soon after Peachtree Creek; and early this morning, when Federal pickets report the Confederates have abandoned their outer arc of fortifications north and east of the city, Sherman actually thinks Hood is evacuating Atlanta. In fact, this story reaches several Northern newspapers, which prematurely proclaim the fall of Atlanta. Even after dawn, when the Federals press forward to discover that the Confederates merely have taken up a new line nearer the city, Sherman fails to show concern for his exposed left. What obsesses him is tearing up the Georgia Railroad east of the city. Yesterday Sherman pulled Kenner Garrard’s cavalry from McPherson’s flank and sent it forty miles to the east to rip up rails and destroy railroad bridges at Covington.

While Sherman frets about the railroad, McPherson worries about what his old classmate Hood might do to his flank. About 7:30 am—while Hardee is forming up undetected to the south—McPherson orders Grenville Dodge’s XVI Corps, which is waiting in reserve, to extend and strengthen the left, connecting with Major General Francis Preston Blair’s XVII Corps below Bald Hill. Shortly after Dodge starts this march, McPherson receives a note from Sherman negating the order. Sherman wants Dodge, who was a professional railroad engineer before the war, to put his entire corps to work “destroying , absolutely, the railroad back to and including Decatur.” But McPherson perseveres. At midmorning, he rides north of the railroad to Sherman’s headquarters. With his easy charm—a West Point friend will later write of McPherson’s “sunny temper and warm heart”—he manages to persuade his superior to permit Dodge to go into line as originally ordered. McPherson then inspects his two-mile front. Finding everything quiet, he has lunch with several generals in a little grove of oaks near the railroad. The generals are enjoying their cigars when, at 12:15 pm, they hear the rattle of musketry a mile and a half to the southeast.

It is the sound of Federal pickets exchanging fire with Hardee’s Confederates. Grenville Dodge hears the shots as well. Thanks to McPherson’s perseverance with Sherman, Dodge happens to be in the right place to respond to them. He has two divisions behind McPherson’s main line; one of them, under Thomas Sweeny, is halted near Sugar Creek, about a mile west of Bald Hill, awaiting orders to take position on the left flank farther south of the hill. The other division, Brigadier General John Fuller’s, is nearby, just west of Sweeny. When the firing breaks out, Dodge is sitting down to lunch at Fuller’s headquarters. He immediately orders Fuller to get his division in line facing southeast, then gallops east to align Sweeny’s men. He personally orders regiments into place “as if he were a brigade commander or a mere colonel, cutting red tape all to pieces.” Dodge deploys Sweeny’s division with one brigade on the right facing southeast, two batteries on a ridge in the middle, and another brigade on the left facing east.

Dodge has fewer than 5,000 soldiers to stretch in a single line. His corps is actually only half a corps to begin with, and one of Fuller’s two brigades is guarding the wagon trains at Decatur. But for once the defenders have the advantage of surprise. The two Confederate divisions emerging from the woods 300 yards from Dodge’s line expects to find the vulnerable Federal rear, not a line of battle on the alert. Bate’s division is on the Confederate right, and Walker’s is on the left—but without Walker. That general, whom Joseph Johnston once pronounced the only officer fit to lead a division in the Western command, lies dead at the age of 47. Walker fell a few hundred yards back in the woods, the victim of a Federal picket who fired one of the first shots. With Brigadier General Hugh Mercer now commanding Walker’s division, the Confederates come “tearing through the woods with the yells of demons.” In three columns, the two divisions advance into the open, halt, and begin to fire. It is a square face-to-face grapple in open field, neither line advancing nor retreating.

The Confederates are supported by artillery posted behind them in the woods. But the Union guns—two batteries from Ohio and Missouri—situated on the high ground in the middle of Sweeny’s line have the better position. These twelve guns begin pouring out the first of the more than 1,000 rounds of shell, case, and canister they will fire this afternoon. Wavering under this barrage, the Confederates retreat to the woods and re-form. Soon they come again. Dodge mounts counterattacks. Although these counterattacks, together with devastating artillery fire, repulse the second Confederate assault, Fuller now has trouble on his right flank. A gap of about 600 yards separates his single brigade from the left flank of McPherson’s main line. A column of Confederates slips into this wide space and opens an enfilading fire on Fuller’s troops. Fuller tries to change front to meet this threat. The maneuver involves an about-face, meaning that the Federals temporarily have their backs to the enemy. Worse, keeping their alignment on the broken ground is almost impossible. Fearing that his men might stampede to the rear instead of halting at the proper time, Fuller seizes the colors of his old Ohio regiment. He plants the flag where he wants to form the line and points his sword to indicate the position to be taken. The men of the regiment, shouting their approval, instantly form on either side of the flag. Then, with another Ohio regiment on their left, they charge and drive the Confederates back toward the woods. A few minutes later, Fuller sees a Confederate general ride forward, swinging his hat in an attempt to rally the men. The next moment his horse goes back riderless. Fuller thinks the fallen general is William Walker, but Walker died an hour and a half ago. The victim is likely a brigadier general in Walker’s division, States Rights Gist.

From a hill north of the fighting, the commander of the Army of the Tennessee, James McPherson, has watched for more than an hour while Dodge’s troops repulse the Confederate assaults. Though one of his generals will later remark, “The Lord put Dodge in the right place today,” that fortuitous piece of work is McPherson’s, of course, and the young general must feel a surge of pride. Satisfied that Dodge can hold his own, McPherson turns his attention to the west, to the vulnerable left flank of General Blair’s XVII Corps. He already has received several messages from Blair indicating that the division there, led by Brigadier General Giles A. Smith, is under attack. Shortly before 2 pm, McPherson decides to ride over to see for himself. In the company of several officers, he takes a narrow road that leads westward through the wooded gap separating Dodge’s troops from Blair’s. Spotting a defensible ridge on the left of the road, McPherson orders his aide, Lieutenant Colonel William Strong, to ride north to XV Corps near the railroad and bring one of John Logan’s reserve brigades to the ridge to plug the gap. Calling out to Strong to join him “at Giles Smith’s,” McPherson gallops southwest down the road on the black horse that has carried him through dozens of actions since the Battle of Shiloh.

He goes only 150 yards before he meets a company of Confederates—skirmishers from Patrick Cleburne’s division. The grayclad commander, Captain Richard Beard, raises his sword as a signal for McPherson to surrender. But McPherson isn’t taken so easily. He checks his horse slightly, raises his hat as politely as if saluting a lady, wheels his horse’s head directly to the right, and dashes off to the rear in a full gallop. Beard orders his men to open fire. McPherson is riding under a low-hanging tree limb, bending over his horse’s neck. A bullet hits him in the lower back and ranges upward, passing near his heart, and McPherson falls to the ground, mortally wounded. Beard sends to the rear the captives of McPherson’s contingent. Then, thinking McPherson dead, Beard leaves the general lying there and moves forward into battle, where he soon becomes a captive himself. McPherson in fact is still alive. He survives long enough—twenty minutes or so—for a wounded Federal prisoner, Private George Reynolds from Iowa, to discover him and comfort his final moments by cradling a blanket under his head and moistening his lip with water. Soon, one of Fuller’s regiments, from Illinois, faces right and charges into the wooded gap. The Illinois men capture forty Confederates and find in one captive’s haversack McPherson’s wallet, which contains a dispatch from Sherman detailing plans for tomorrow’s operations. The Illinois men hold the ground long enough to permit the recovery of McPherson’s body, which is then borne by ambulance to Sherman’s headquarters. There the body is laid out on a door someone has wrenched from its hinges to serve as a bier. Sherman weeps unashamedly over his fallen protégé—only 35 years old—whom he had thought one day would succeed him and Grant in the Union high command. Suddenly, random Confederate shells start hitting the headquarters, and Sherman realizes the old wooden house might catch fire. He covers the body with a United States flag and orders the slain general sent to safety at Marietta.

Despite his obvious grief, Sherman maintains the remarkable calm that comes over him in a crisis. He manages to stay in close touch with a separate engagement at Decatur. Joseph Wheeler’s Confederate cavalrymen, fighting dismounted and with fierce valor, have driven a brigade of Fuller’s division from town. But Sherman sends a brigade of reinforcements from Schofield’s army that arrives in time to protect the army’s wagon trains. Meanwhile, Sherman has already provided for the succession of McPherson. At the first word that McPherson’s horse had emerged from the woods riderless, he ordered John Logan of XV Corps to take command of the Army of the Tennessee. And when Logan sends word that his new command is hard pressed, Sherman replies: “Tell General Logan to fight ‘em, fight ‘em, fight ‘em like hell!”

At midafternoon, Logan is being pressured on the extreme left flank, where Giles Smith’s division is under assault by Patrick Cleburne’s troops. Cleburne launched his attack about thirty minutes after Bate and Walker hit Dodge’s XVI Corps nearly a half mile to the east. George Maney’s division is supposed to support Cleburne, but Maney’s columns run afoul of the rough terrain and their attack is late and uncoordinated. Cleburne’s troops sweep north, expecting to come upon an unprotected Federal flank. Much to their surprise, they hit the southern tip of Smith’s line where it curves back to the east in the shape of a hook. Federal entrenchments and a nearly impassable abatis of slashed young oak trees extend across the road in front of Cleburne’s men. Cleburne’s leftmost brigade, Arkansas men under Brigadier General Daniel C. Govan, greatly overlap Smith’s uncovered left flank. While half of Govan’s brigade pushes head on through the abatis, the other half swings around to the right in an attempt to pass and turn Smith’s flank. The Confederates executing the flanking movement find the wooded gap between Smith and Dodge. About 2 pm they reach the road where, at this very moment, James McPherson is galloping to his death farther east. On that road, they intercept and seize six Federal guns, which are hurrying east to aid Dodge’s XVI Corps. Then Govan’s Arkansans turn back to the west and cut off part of the Federal force—the Iowa brigade of Giles Smith’s division—that is fronting south. The Confederates capture two additional Federal guns and 700 Iowans of Colonel William W. Belknap’s brigade, including an entire Iowan regiment. In the process they liberate 75 Arkansans, who surrendered to the Iowans only minutes ago. Reunited, Govan’s brigade pushes north, driving Smith’s shattered flank back toward Bald Hill. As the Federal line is compressed, many of Smith’s men are compelled to change front repeatedly. From behind their breastworks, which face west toward Atlanta, they have had to front south against Govan and then east to cope with an additional threat.

This danger is posed by Cleburne’s Texas Brigade under Brigadier General James A. Smith. The Texans, attacking north on Govan’s right, pour into the wooded gap and wreak havoc—some of them are responsible for McPherson’s death. While part of the Texas Brigade turns left and attacks Giles Smith’s division from the rear, another element moves right and engages the flank of Fuller’s division. Hurrying northward between 2 and 3 pm with “ungovernable enthusiasm,” the Texans get all the way behind Bald Hill. Thus, in little more than 24 hours, these men have come virtually full circle. Yesterday they defended Bald Hill against the Federal division of Mortimer Leggett. Now, from Leggett’s former positions, the Texans are attempting to retake the height.

Leggett’s Federals, menaced from the rear, have to leap their breastworks and face east to meet the Texans. In this confusing state of affairs, compounded by smoke obscuring the field, Leggett’s men worry that their comrades flanking the hill might mistake them for Confederates and open fire. To dispel any doubts about who controls the hill, the brigade commander, Manning F. Force, calls for a flag to mark his line. One of his young officers, assuming that the situation is hopeless and the general means to surrender, goes looking for a white handkerchief or shirt. “Damn you, sir!” Force shouts. “I don’t want a flag of truce; I want the American flag!” A few minutes later, a bullet passes through Force’s head, narrowling missing his brain but shattering his palate and leaving him unable to speak. Force’s men carry on and, with the support of ten artillery pieces posted on and near the hill, repeatedly beat back the Texans’ charges.

Cleburne’s Texans soon face danger from another direction. A punishing enfilade of musketry on their right flank erupts from Brigadier General Charles C. Walcutt’s brigade of the Federal XV Corps, which has turned south to aid Leggett. By about 3 pm, the Texans’ commander, James Smith, is wounded, and all but one of their regimental commanders is out of action. The Texans have suffered enough. Disheartened and virtually leaderless, they relax the pressure against Bald Hill. Half of one regiments surrenders. Others fall back southward to take up positions in support of Govan’s brigade.

From his observation post on the second floor of a house a mile or so west of Bald Hill, John Bell Hood views the Battle of Atlanta with growing anger. Looking to the southeast, he has watched with “astonishment and bitter disappointment.” Hood is first upset because the assault, scheduled to start at dawn, got underway six hours late. Then—mistakenly—he assumes that Hardee has failed to get in the rear of the Federal line. (Hood evidently can’t see the attacks east of McPherson’s main line.) In fact, Hood himself is guilty of the day’s most serious failure in command. Though he has watched Cleburne push the Federals north toward Bald Hill, he unaccountably delays for nearly two hours the second phase of his battle plan: an assault from the west by Cheatham’s three divisions. Finally, about 3 pm, Hood decides to create “a diversion” to aid Hardee. He orders Cheatham to attack. By the time Cheatham advances, it is 3:30 pm and the high tide of Hardee’s assaults has ebbed. On both of Hardee’s fronts—south and east of Bald Hill and farther east at Sugar Creek—his Confederates are falling back and regrouping after nearly three hours of hard fighting.

Unaware of this, Cheatham’s fresh troops advance with undiminished vigor on a front more than a mile wide, extending from Bald Hill on the south to a point about 500 yards north of the Georgia railroad. On their right, at Bald Hill, they find the going rough. Leggett’s Federals, having scarcely caught their breath after repulsing Cleburne to their rear, jump back across their breastworks to face west—“looking for all the world like a long line of those toy-monkeys you see which jump over the end of a stick.” The Federals hold off Cheatham with such grit that they proudly begin referring to this treeless high ground as Leggett’s Hill, in honor of their division commander.

It is another story a half mile north of the hill, where Cheatham attacks on both sides of the railroad with two divisions supported by long-range artillery. The terrain here is relatively flat, and the defenders—the three divisions of Logan’s old XV Corps—have been considerably weakened by the earlier dispatch of troops to bolster Dodge’s XVI Corps at Sugar Creek. The most vulnerable part of the Federal line is held by the division of Brigadier General Morgan L. Smith, Gile Smith’s older brother, who has temporarily replaced Logan as corps commander. Now manned by only a half-dozen regiments, Smith’s thin line straddles the railroad cut—an excavation fifteen feet deep and fifty feet wide at the top. Cheatham’s advance against Smith’s line is spearheaded by Brigadier General John C. Brown’s division—the brigade of Arthur M. Manigault on the left of the railroad and that of Colonel John G. Coltart on the right. Manigault’s men quickly capture a two-gun section of an Illinois battery, posted in the skirmish line well in advance of the Federal main line. But then the Confederate line begins shifting “like the movements of a serpent,” and Manigault’s brigade suffers a repulse; the men take cover in a ravine. Beyond the ravine, on a wagon road that runs just north of the railroad and parallel with it, stands the large white wooden house of the Widow Pope. Men from two of Manigault’s South Carolina regiments get into the house. They climb to the second floor and, from windows and veranda, pour down a commanding fire on the Federal main line 200 yards in front of them. Their sharpshooting is particularly galling to the crews of six Federal guns flanking both sides of the railroad cut. These guns return the fire, blanketing the field with dense clouds of smoke.

The smoke conceals Manigault’s columns, which mass near the Pope house and then rush forward on the road and in the cover afforded by the railroad cut. Before the Federals realize what has happened, these Confederate columns suddenly emerge 75 yards in the rear of the Federal works. The air is filled with “bullets spitefully whizzing from the rear.” Colonel Collart’s men have drifted to the right, where they come under heavy flanking fire from the Federal main line; nevertheless, they are able to seize a portion of the enemy entrenchments. Behind the cut, the Federal line is thrown into hopeless confusion. Manigault’s Confederates take four guns to the left of the railroad cut. The Mississippi brigade of Colonel Jacob H. Sharp, following in Manigault’s wake, push into the cut, turn right, and capture the two remaining Federal guns. Then they drive the Federal troops a half mile from their lines.

Manigault’s troops, meanwhile, advance about 200 yards north of the cut to drive away the infantry supporting Francis DeGress’s celebrated Illinois battery. DeGress, alone with his crews, desperately turn the guns to the left and greet the enemy charge with double canister. When the Confederates keep coming, he orders his men to safety but stays on with Sergeant Peter Weman to begin spiking the guns. Their job is half-finished when the Confederates push to within twenty paces. DeGress is standing defiantly between his last two working guns with a lanyard in each hand. He answers the Confederate order to surrender by firing both pieces at point-blank range. Then, obscured by the smoke, he and Wyman spike those guns and make a dash for the rear. Wyman dies in a volley of bullets. DeGress somehow escapes unhurt to report to Sherman—in tears—the loss of his beloved guns. The retreating Federal infantry regroup 400 yards to the rear, taking up position in a line they occupied yesterday. But their withdrawal opens a gap that exposes the flanks of the Federal divisions on either side, and Cheatham’s troops pour in to widen the wedge. To the south, the blueclads occupying the right of William Harrow’s division yield gound—but grudgingly. To the north of the gap, Manigault’s brigade, now reinforced by Colonel Bushrod Jones’s Alabama brigade, slams into the left flank of Charles R. Woods’s division, forcing it back.

From high ground near his headquarters less than a mile north of the railroad, Sherman has a clear view through field glasses of the crisis confronting his XV Corps. Determined to plug the widening gap south of him, Sherman orders a counterattack by Woods’s division. To support them, he orders Schofield to mass all the guns from his Army of the Ohio—twenty pieces—on a knoll near headquarters. Sherman leads the batteries into position and personally sights the first gun, squinting along the barrel as a stray bullet whizzes past his neck. While Sherman mounts this counterstrike, the new commander of the Army of the Tennessee, John Logan, is putting together an attack of his own. Logan is with Dodge’s corps at Sugar Creek when an aide informs him XV Corps is in trouble. Logan retrieves a brigade he had lent to Dodge earlier and asks Dodge to let him borrow “the Little Dutchman’s brigade.” This brigade, from Sweeny’s division, is commanded by German-born Colonel August Mersy. Though Mersy and many of his men are in fact no longer in the US Army—they mustered out after their term of service expired—they have volunteered to serve while awaiting transportation home. Now Mersy’s four regiments, which have already fought for more than three hours on Dodge’s front, turn and head northward at the double-quick. Logan himself leads them in the mile-and-a-half march to a ravine in the rear of the new Federal line north of the railroad. In all, four divisions are now sending seven brigades to counterattack.

As his men form, the swarthy Logan rides along the lines, waving his broadbrimmed hat and letting his long, jet-black hair stream in the wind. To urge them on, he invokes the memory of his fallen predecessor, shouting over and over again: “McPherson and revenge, boys!” In return the men chant their new commander’s nickname: “Black Jack! Black Jack! Black Jack!” Supported by nearly thirty guns firing from north and south, the blue lines converge on the outnumbered Confederates along the railroad. Manigault’s and the other Confederate brigades recoil in shock. In less than thirty minutes, the Federals have closed the gap and restored XV Corps’ original lines, recovering eight of the ten lost artillery pieces. Mersy’s brigade—minus “the Little Dutchman,” who had fallen wounded just before the charge—recapture DeGress’s 20-pounder Parrotts and turn them on the Confederates. DeGress himself arrives and thanks the men profusely even though, in their eagerness, they load one of his prize guns with too great a charge and burst its barrel. As Cheatham’s Confederates retreat, Schofield goes to Sherman with a suggestion. He proposes to form from his little army and Thomas’s big one a strong column to strike Cheatham in flank and roll up the entire Confederate line in front of Atlanta. But Sherman declines with a smile. “Let the Army of the Tennessee fight it out,” he answers. Proud to a fault of his old army, he will later explain lamely that he had hesitated to send help because Logan’s men “would be jealous.”

It isn’t over yet. As Cheatham retires, Hardee is regrouping south of Bald Hill. Maney’s division rallies and moves into position. Cleburne brings up his reserve brigade; several regiments from Walker’s division move west from Sugar Creek. About 5 pm, this combined force advances against the southern flank of Giles Smith’s battle-weary division, which already has been pushed back at least 300 yards. Once again, Smith is hit alternately from the south, east, and west, and his men have to leap back and forth over their breastworks to meet the enemy. The Confederates, their approach often hidden by woods that reach to within fifteen yards of the Federal defenses, get so close that sometimes only a breastwork of red clay separates them from the defenders.

Colonel Harris D. Lampley’s Alabama regiment repeatedly charges the works defended by Colonel William W. Belknap’s Iowa regiment. Every time the Iowans repluse a charge, they clamber over the breastworks to collect weapons from the dead and wounded Alabamians piling up in front. Their firepower thus replenished, the Iowa men take a heavy toll of their enemy, including three colorbearers shot down in rapid succession. Undeterred, Lampley attempts to lead his badly depleted regiment in yet another charge. A bullet hits him, but he doesn’t falter. Nearing the breastworks, he turns and starts cursing those who have failed to follow. With that, Belknap, the brawny Iowa commander, leans over the works in a volley of bullets—one ball actually passes through his bushy red beard—and grabs Lampley by the collar. He pulls on it, and Lampley falls across the parapet. “Look at your men!” Belknap shouts. “They are all dead! What are you cursing them for?” Belknap will win a brigadier’s star for his bravery today. Lampley will die in a few days.

Hardee’s Confederates fall back and, at 6 pm, mount a final assault. Under fire, Giles Smith manages to pull back northward and form a new, stronger line. Linking with Leggett at Bald Hill, the line extends east toward Sugar Creek to connect with Colonel Hugo Wangelin’s brigade of Missourians—the XV Corps reinforcements that McPherson sought in the last order he ever issued. The new line at last narrows the gap where McPherson met his death four hours ago, and it proves strong enough to withstand Hardee’s final lunge.

There will be no more assaults today. Cleburne’s division, in particular, is spent. Cleburne has lost more than 40 percent of his men in casualties, including thirty of his sixty highest-ranking officers. After dark, while Cleburne and the remnants of Hardee’s left wing cling to their positions south of Bald Hill, the right of Hardee’s corps withdraws southward into the dense woods from which they emerged seven hours before under the bright sun of noon. The Battle of Atlanta is over. Hood, despite his anger at what he believes to be Hardee’s shortcomings, professes satisfaction with the outcome. “The partial success of the day was productive of much benefit to the army,” he writes. “It greatly improved the morale of the troops, unfused new life and fresh hopes and demonstrated to the foe our determination not to abandon more territory without at least a manful effort to retain it.” No one questions that the day’s efforts have been manful. Hood’s casualties on this tumultuous Friday amount to around 8,000 soldiers out of nearly 40,000 engaged, more than double his toll at Peachtree Creek two days ago. In just five days as commander of the Army of Tennessee, Hood has gambled twice and lost almost as many men as the deposed Johnston lost in ten weeks. In fact, the estimates of Confederate casualties are so chilling that Sherman at first refuses to believe them. His own losses are dreadful enough: 430 killed, 1,559 wounded, and 1,773 missing or taken prisoner for a total of 3,722 out of more than 30,000 engaged.

Sherman mourns every loss, but most of all he grieves for McPherson. He remembers with regret that, in the spring, McPherson asked for permission for leave to marry his fiancée, Emily Hoffman of Baltimore. But Sherman had reluctantly refused because the armies were preparing for the march against Atlanta. Sherman will pour out his heart to Hoffman. “I yield to no one on earth but yourself the right to exceed me in lamentations for our dead hero,” he will write. “Though the cannon booms now, and the angry rattle of musketry tells me that I also will likely pay the same penalty, yet while life lasts I will delight in the memory of that bright particular star which has gone before to prepare the way for us more hardened sinners who must struggle to the end.” By the time Emily Hoffman receives that letter, she will already know of her fiancé’s death. A telegram will come and a member of the family—strong Southern sympathizers who disapprove of the engagement—reads it and exclaims, “I have the most wonderful news—McPherson is dead!” Emily hears this and goes to her bedroom. She will remain there for an entire year in complete seclusion, with curtains drawn, speaking to no one. Like her fallen fiancé—“that bright particular star”—she is a casualty of the Battle of Atlanta.


In the Shenandoah the Federal pursuers and Early’s men skirmish at Newtown and near Berryville, Virginia. By this evening, Early has reconcentrated his army at Strasburg. Crook joins Averell and Hayes at Kernstown, about four miles south of Winchester. With this considerable army once again between Early and Washington, there appears to be no further need for the VI and XIX Corps reinforcements. Defending the Valley is once again Hunter’s job as commander of the department. Grant explains carefully to Halleck what he wants Hunter to do: follow Early, if possible as far south as Gordonsville and Charlottesville, where he should cut the railroads. Failing that, Hunter should at least render the Shenandoah Valley useless to the enemy. “I do not mean that houses should be burned,” Grant emphasizes—somewhat tardily—“but that every particle of provisions and stock should be removed.” Then Grant elaborates with a metaphor that the people of the Shenandoah will never forget: Hunter’s troops, he says, should “eat out Virginia clear and clean as far as they go, so that crows flying over it for the balance of the season will have to carry their provender with them.”


Elsewhere, skirmishes break out near Pine Bluff, Arkansas; in Wright County, near Camden Point and Union Mills, Missouri; at Coldwater River, Mississippi; Clifton, Tennessee; and Vidalia and Condordia, Louisiana.

The people of Louisiana ratify the ordinance of emancipation without compensation adopted last May 11th at the state’s constitutional convention.

[Doug64]

July 23, Saturday

Today, with Jubal Early’s Confederates apparently in full retreat before Crook’s force at Kernstown, the canny President Lincoln wires General David Hunter at Harpers Ferry, “Are you able to take care of the enemy when he turns back upon you, as he probably will on finding that Wright has left?” Lincoln is correct. Early has turned and, from Strasburg, marches north on the Valley Turnpike toward Kernstown, just south of Winchester. The Federals deploy to meet him and sharp skirmishing ensues. At Atlanta, both armies rest and repair damage, caring for the dying and wounded after yesterday’s battle, although a skirmish does occur near Sweetwater, Georgia. In western Missouri there is a skirmish at Liberty, and for six days a Federal column operates from Jacksonville toward Baldwin, Florida. Action takes place in Randolph County, Missouri; until October 10th Federal troops carry out desultory operations in southwest New Mexico Territory against the Amerinds. General A.J. Smith and his beaten Federals return to Memphis after their failure against Forrest and S.D. Lee near Tupelo. Smith is miffed at Sherman’s unappreciative reaction to his campaign, and begins at once to prepare for a second outing against Forrest, one that he hopes to improve beyond reproach.

The Louisiana Constitutional Convention adopts a constitution which includes an end to slavery, one of the several steps in restoring Louisiana to the Union. It is ratified by the unionists on September 5th, at least by those taking the loyalty oath.

[Doug64]

July 24, Sunday

Informed this morning that a sizable enemy force is approaching Kernstown in the Shenandoah Valley, General Crook assumes it to be a reconnaissance in force and moves to drive it off. He has just reorganized his 12,000 infantrymen into three divisions, commanded by Colonels Joseph Thoburn, Isaac H. Duval, and James Mulligan—the last a spirited Irish-American who wears a green scarf in combat. While Crook’s infantry form a line covering the Valley Turnpike, Averell’s and Duffié’s cavalry shield his flanks.

When a Confederate assault line appears about noon, Mulligan’s division confidently charges. But instead of a reconnaissance, the Federals run into Gordon’s full division. The surprised Federals fall back to their lines. To make a flanking attack, Crook brings Thoburn’s men up from reserve and waits for Averell, who has been sent around the Confederate right. But Averall dawdles, and before he is in position the Federal infantry is caught in the jaws of a double envelopment, with Ramseur’s division swinging around the right and Breckenridge’s two brigades attacking on the left. Under vicious fire, the Federal line begins to fold. Colonel Mulligan falls from his horse with five Minié balls in his body. As his distraught men carry their mortally wounded commander to the shade of an oak tree, Mulligan snaps, “Lay me down and save the colors.” Averell sees Breckinridge’s attack, but to Crook’s disgust, he simply leads his men to the rear, toward Winchester. Gordon charges the center, and the Federal line gives way entirely. Crook and his officers manage to keep the retreat from becoming a full-fledged rout, but they can’t stop it. The Federals fall back through Winchester toward Bunker Hill, twelve miles farther north. Once more the Shenandoah has become a valley of humiliation for the Federals.


Skirmishes break out at Falling Waters, West Virginia; Whitesville, Florida; Colliersville, Tennessee; and Cartersville, Georgia, on Sherman’s communication line.

[Potemkin]

July 22, Friday
There will be no more assaults today. Cleburne’s division, in particular, is spent. Cleburne has lost more than 40 percent of his men in casualties, including thirty of his sixty highest-ranking officers. After dark, while Cleburne and the remnants of Hardee’s left wing cling to their positions south of Bald Hill, the right of Hardee’s corps withdraws southward into the dense woods from which they emerged seven hours before under the bright sun of noon. The Battle of Atlanta is over. Hood, despite his anger at what he believes to be Hardee’s shortcomings, professes satisfaction with the outcome. “The partial success of the day was productive of much benefit to the army,” he writes. “It greatly improved the morale of the troops, unfused new life and fresh hopes and demonstrated to the foe our determination not to abandon more territory without at least a manful effort to retain it.” No one questions that the day’s efforts have been manful. Hood’s casualties on this tumultuous Friday amount to around 8,000 soldiers out of nearly 40,000 engaged, more than double his toll at Peachtree Creek two days ago. In just five days as commander of the Army of Tennessee, Hood has gambled twice and lost almost as many men as the deposed Johnston lost in ten weeks. In fact, the estimates of Confederate casualties are so chilling that Sherman at first refuses to believe them. His own losses are dreadful enough: 430 killed, 1,559 wounded, and 1,773 missing or taken prisoner for a total of 3,722 out of more than 30,000 engaged.

“Another victory like this, and we’re done for!” - Pyrrhus of Epirus

What was Hood thinking? The South couldn’t afford these losses. And for what? Just to boost morale? Just to show how ‘manful’ they were? Both sides already knew how manful their opponents were - the battlefields of the Civil War were strewn with corpses to prove it. And the North could sustain these losses far better than the South could. Hood should have been husbanding his troops, not squandering them. What possessed him?

[Doug64]

“Another victory like this, and we’re done for!” - Pyrrhus of Epirus

What was Hood thinking? The South couldn’t afford these losses. And for what? Just to boost morale? Just to show how ‘manful’ they were? Both sides already knew how manful their opponents were - the battlefields of the Civil War were strewn with corpses to prove it. And the North could sustain these losses far better than the South could. Hood should have been husbanding his troops, not squandering them. What possessed him?

The whole “good for morale” shtick was just Hood putting lipstick on a pig, not that anyone with any real knowledge of military affairs would buy it. But what he was doing? Precisely what President Davis wanted him to do, if not with the result that Davis had hoped for. The disdain and distrust Davis and Johnston felt for each other were one of the major nails in the Confederacy’s coffin. And just think, this was what Hood had been aiming for with months of talking down Johnston to Richmond behind his back! The North owed Hood a great debt of gratitude.

[Doug64]

July 25, Monday

Early’s Confederates in the northern Shenandoah follow Crook’s retreating Federals in a driving rain to Bunker Hill, Virginia. Fighting erupts at Bunker Hill, Martinsburg, West Virginia, and Williamsport, Maryland. The Federals encamp on the Potomac.


Today, while the chase after Early is still going on, Grant decides it is time to “do something in the way of offensive movement” at Richmond. He tells Meade to mount a diversion north of the James, “having for its real object the destruction of the railroad on that side.” He wants Hancock and two divisions of Sheridan’s cavalry to cross at Deep Bottom, ten miles southeast of Richmond. Once across, Sheridan is to attack the city if an opportunity presents itself. Hancock, who despite constant pain from his wound had resumed command of II Corps in late June, is to advance on the Confederates at Chaffin’s Bluff to prevent reinforcements from crossing the James to oppose Sheridan. If a cavalry attack on Richmond seems unlikely to succeed, Sheridan is to ride around the city to the north and west. He is to cut the Virginia Central and destroy it as far as North Anna. This will stop the flow of supplies from the Shenandoah and interfere with Early’s return to Lee. Meanwhile, Hancock just might find an opportunity for a grand stroke. “It is barely possible,” Grant writes, “that by a bold move this expedition may surprise the little garrison of citizen soldiery now in Richmond and get in.” This is of course a long shot, but the threat alone might force Lee to shift a significant part of his army away from the defences of Petersburg. Grant tells Meade exactly what to do if that happens. “Concentrate all the force possible at the point in the enemy’s line we expect to penetrate.” The attack must be made quickly, Grant says, and if it doesn’t succeed, must be abandoned just as quickly.


There are Federal cavalry operations from Decatur to Courtland, Alabama; a skirmish near Benton’s Ferry on the Amite River, Louisiana; a skirmish at Pleasant Hill, Missouri; and an affair at Benton, Arkansas. In Dakota Territory, Federal soldiers carry out an expedition against the Sioux until October 8th. Meanwhile, mining operations by Federals and some countertunneling by Confederates are in full swing at Petersburg.

President Lincoln writes Abram Wakeman that the coming election “will almost certainly be no other than a contest between a Union and Disunion candidate, disunion certainly following the success of the latter.”

[Doug64]

July 26, Tuesday

“We have Atlanta close aboard, as the sailors say, but it is a hard nut to handle,” William Sherman writes today to his wife, Ellen, four days after the Battle of Atlanta. “These fellows fight like Devils and Indians combined, and it calls for all my cunning and strength.” Sherman lacks the troops to surround Atlanta and lay siege to the city. And he wisely declines to risk a direct attack against the city’s perimeter defenses, which his chief engineer, Captain Orlando M. Poe, describes as “too strong to assault and too extensive to invest.” Atlanta’s impressive fortifications—breastworks and rifle pits studded with a score of fortified batteries—encircle the city at an average distance of a mile and a half from the center.

Instead of testing these defenses, Sherman means to isolate the city by inscribing around it “a circle of desolation.” His strategy focuses on the four railroads that make Atlanta so vital to the South. One route, the Western & Atlantic, Sherman’s supply line to Chattanooga, is firmly in Federal control. Another, the Georgia Railroad, running east to Augusta, already has been rendered inoperative by Sherman’s rail benders, who have ripped up thirty miles of track. And the third line, the Atlanta & West Point, running southwestward into Alabama, had about thirty miles of track destroyed during the third week of this month by Federal cavalry operating out of Tennessee. The Confederates in Atlanta possess only one remaining rail link to the outside world: the Macon & Western Railroad. This line shares a common right-of-way with the Atlanta & West Point track for a five-mile stretch below the city. Then, at East Point, it branches off to the southeast to Macon, 85 miles from Atlanta, making connections there for Savannah and thence Richmond. To cut the Macon & Western line, Sherman develops a plan for simultaneous movements by cavalry and infantry. Two separate columns of troopers will converge on the line and disrupt it in the vicinity of Lovejoy’s Station, about twenty miles southeast of Atlanta—indeed, cavalry under General George Stoneman leaves the Atlanta area today toward Macon. At the same time, from its position just east of the city, the Army of the Tennessee will execute a counterclockwise swing around Atlanta, marching in the rear of the other two Federal armies, then south and east to attack the railroad between the city and East Point. By thus threatening the Confederates’ only line of supply, Sherman hopes to force Hood either to leave his Atlanta fortifications and fight or to evacuate the city altogether.

To lead his old army—his “whiplash”—in this complicated maneuver, Sherman faces the painful and difficult task of finding a permanent replacement for his fallen protégé James McPherson. The senior commander available is Joseph Hooker, but Sherman detests Hooker and never seriously considers him. The obvious choice is the fiery and charismatic XV Corps commander, John Logan, who performed so effectively as temporary army commander after McPherson’s death. Logan is a politician by trade, however, and not a professional soldier. Moreover, he once rubbed that paragon of the cautious West Pointers, George Thomas, the wrong way, and Thomas vehemently opposes Logan’s appointment. Even the intuitive Sherman wants to play it safe in the delicate endeavor ahead. “I wanted to succeed in taking Atlanta,” he will write, “and needed commanders who were purely and technically soldiers, men who would obey orders and execute them promptly and on time.” So Sherman finally settles upon the one-armed commander of IV Corps, Major General Oliver O. Howard. A 33-year-old West Pointer, Howard is an unusual choice to lead a bunch of high-spirited westerners. He is Logan’s—and Sherman’s—opposite: a New England abolitionist who never drinks, smokes, or swears, and who is so pious that the troops refer to him as “Old Prayer Book.” Perhaps because of these qualities, Sherman considers Howard safe and reliable, despite the latter’s blunders in May at Pickett’s Mill.

Though deeply hurt at being passed over, Logan nurses his grievances “with the grace and dignity of a soldier, gentleman, and patriot,” writes Sherman. But not so Joseph Hooker, who blames Howard for the Federal defeat last year at Chancellorsville—the defeat that cost Hooker command of the Army of the Potomac. Citing Howard’s selection as an affront to his sense of “justice and self-respect,” Hooker asks to be relieved. Sherman grants the request immediately and without regret. Hooker’s men are much sorrier to see him go. A Massachusetts soldier writes that on the day Hooker departs—bound for a desk assignment in Cincinnati—“bronzed old veterans of the corps wept like children.”

Skirmishing flares near Decatur on the Atlanta front.


For a few days after receiving Grant’s directive to attack Petersburg, Meade has hemmed and hawed, contemplating the problems and polling his corps commanders for advice. Today, Burnside submits a plan: He would begin an assault by detonating Colonel Pleasants’ mine—completed three days ago—just before daylight. Then he would send two brigades in columns through the gap left by the explosion. A regiment at the head of one column would peel off to the left and a regiment at the head of the other column would swing to the right, clearing the Confederates from their lines on either side of the flattened fort. Then the rest of the division would drive to the top of Cemetery Hill, with Burnside’s three other divisions following.


Early’s Confederates fight withdrawing Federals at Falling Waters, West Virginia, and Muddy Branch, Maryland, as Crook and his command cross into Maryland. Early begins breaking up the Baltimore & Ohio near Martinsburg, West Virginia. Further fighting occurs at Rapidan Station, Virginia, and White’s Station, Tennessee. Confederates attack Shelbina, Missouri. At 4 pm outside Petersburg, Virginia, Hancock’s divisions begin their nightlong journey northward, across both the Appomattox and the James. A three-day Union scout operates to Searcy and West Point, Arkansas; and a Federal scout in Johnson County, Missouri, lasts six days. Action takes place at Wallace’s Ferry, Big Creek, Arkansas, and a skirmish breaks out near Haddix’s Ferry, Kentucky. Major General Dabney H. Maury is assigned to command the Confederate Department of Alabama, Mississippi, and East Louisiana.

President Lincoln writes General Sherman his “profoundest thanks to you and your whole Army for the present campaign so far.”

[Doug64]

July 27, Wednesday

When Oliver Howard assumes his new command of the Army of the Tennessee outside Atlanta this morning, the double strike aimed at the Macon & Western Railroad is already in motion. Cavalry columns are en route south; the Army of the Tennessee has pulled out of its Bald Hill line east of Atlanta and is on the march.


General Crook’s Federals cross the Potomac into Maryland and camp at Sharpsburg to guard the South Mountain passes. Triumphant, Early tears up the recently repaired B & O Railroad track at Martinsburg and dispatches two of his cavalry brigades, under McCausland and Bradley Johnson, raiding into Maryland and Pennsylvania. There is a skirmish at Back Creek Bridge, West Virginia. Major General Halleck takes command of the departments around Washington concerned with the defense of the area.


At midmorning, General Hancock turns his men to the west in their march toward Richmond and unexpectedly run into a strongly fortified enemy line behind Bailey’s Creek, which his advance paralleled yesterday. Reports of Federal activity around Deep Bottom alerted Lee to the possibility of Federal operations there. Four days ago he quietly began pulling units out of the Petersburg line and sending them north until four full divisions are in place southeast of Richmond. On receiving word of Hancock’s difficult situation, Grant is emphatic: “I do not want Hancock to attack intrenched lines.” Instead, he directs that II Corps remain in place for another day while Sheridan’s cavalry maneuvers to turn the Confederate flank.

The cavalry fare little better. The troopers find the infantry division of Major General Joseph B. Kershaw posted squarely in their path on the New Market road. Kershaw attacks and drives Sheridan’s lead brigade back, over the crest of a ridge. Here the Federal cavalrymen form a battle line, dismount, and lay down on the ground. Kershaw’s skirmishers storm confidently over the crest—to confront a line of enemy carbines barely fifteen yards away. A withering volley drives the Confederates back in disorder. Sheridan pursues with his mounted reserves, taking 250 prisoners and some battle flags, but in the presence of a large infantry force he dares not continue his raid.


Although no final decision has been made about an attack through the Petersburg lines, this afternoon Colonel Pleasants receives orders to begin loading the tunnel with four tons of gunpowder. It takes his men six hours, until 10 pm, to place 320 kegs of black powder. Four magazines are placed in each of two lateral galleries that extend almost forty feet north and south from the end of the main tunnel. The magazines would be detonated by gunpowder-filled wooden troughs leading from the main gallery, where a 98-foot fuse runs toward the mine entrance. Instead of high-quality, continuous blasting fuse, Pleasants has been given 10-foot lengths of low-grad fuse, which his men have to splice together. To prevent the force of the explosion from being vented harmlessly out of the mouth of the mine, earth is tamped into the ends of the side galleries and the last 34 feet of the main gallery. This work goes on all night and through tomorrow, not finished until the evening.


Elsewhere, action occurs at Whiteside on Black Creek in Florida and at Massard Prairie near Fort Smith, Arkansas. Severe bombardment continues against Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. A skirmish flares at Snapfinger Creek, Georgia, and a Federal expedition operates from Norfolk, Virginia, into North Carolina. Skirmishing also breaks out on the Blackwater Creek and on Big Creek, and Federals scout in Chariton County, Missouri. Throughout the last part of July the Union Navy carries out reconnaissances in the Mobile Bay area as Admiral Farragut develops his plans for attack.

[Doug64]

July 28, Thursday

By this morning, the Army of the Tennessee has completed a half circle around Atlanta. All three corps are now on Thomas’s right, a couple of miles west of Atlanta near a little rural chapel known as Ezra Church. From there, Howard can arc south and east toward the railroad. Unlike Sherman, who thinks Hood has shot his wad in the two bloody battles of the past eight days, Howard anticipates trouble. He carefully chooses good defensive ground. Grenville Dodge’s XVI Corps and Francis Preston Blair’s XVII Corps take up a north-south line facing east. On Blair’s right, Logan’s XV Corps extends the line southward in front of Ezra Church and then bends west at a right angle across the Lickskillet road. The men pile up temporary breastworks from logs, fence rails, and other materials at hand. A group of Logan’s Missourians even venture into the chapel and drag out pews. These preparations aren’t wasted, for Howard’s premonition proves accurate.

In Atlanta, Hood is fully aware of Howard’s march, and he has four divisions from two corps en route to stop it. Hood’s old corps—now under the newly arrived Lieutenant General Stephen D. Lee, who has replaced the temporary commander, General Cheatham—marches west along the Lickskillet road with orders to block the southward Federal thrust near Ezra Church. A mile or so behind Lee comes Alexander Stewart’s corps. Once Lee has stopped the Federal advance, Stewart is to skirt south around Howard’s exposed right flank and attack him from the rear.

Late in the morning, Stephen Lee makes contact with Howard’s troops. Only thirty years old (the youngest lieutenant general in the Confederacy) and fresh from a cavalry command in Mississippi, Lee is eager to prove his mettle. Without consulting Hood, who as usual remains at headquarters in Atlanta, Lee decides to attack. He deploys a division under Brigadier General John C. Brown facing northward and launches the troops against the right wing of Logan’s corps.

A couple of miles away, Sherman hears the opening shots and remarks, “Logan is feeling for them, and I guess he has found them.” Sherman is delighted that his tactics have lured the Confederates out of their Atlanta fortifications. “Just what I wanted,” he says gaily when a staff officer reports the assault on Logan. “Tell Howard to invite them to attack, it will save us trouble, save us trouble, they’ll only beat their own brains out, beat their own brains out.”

In a matter of minutes, it seems that the Confederates will do exactly that. One of Brown’s brigades lose three commanders in quick succession. In the same brigade, an Alabama regiment takes 173 men into battle and lose 125 of them. In front of an Illinois regiment, the Confederate dead collect “in windrows, sometimes two or three deep.” Stephen Lee is undeterred. Looking like “the God of War, positively radiant,” Lee renews the assault and belatedly sends his other division, under Major General Henry Clayton, against Logan’s left wing—but with no better results.

At 2 pm, Stewart’s corps of Confederates arrive on the scene. Stewart, seeing Lee in obvious need of assistance, disregards his original instructions to wait and flank Howard tomorrow. He orders the division under 33-year-old Major General Edward C. Walthall to attack the Union right, where Brown’s men have failed. Walthall forms his men shortly before 3 pm. Then, riding his dapple-gray horse and brandishing his saber, he leads repeated charges against the Federal-held ridge. His brave perseverance draws thew admiration of Colonel William Belknap, whose Iowa regiment has reinforced the right of the Federal line. “Three times he led that grand veteran column,” Belknap will write. “It seemed as if half the army were firing at the General. I took seven shots at him myself as fast as a musket could be loaded for me. I have seen many mounted officers under fire and in battle but never saw any man bear himself with more heroic daring in the face of death on every side than he did on that day.”

Stewart’s other division starts to deploy for the assault. Then the division commander, Major General William W. Loring, goes down severely wounded, and Stewart himself is injured by a ricocheting bullet that hits his forehead. Then intrepid Walthall, who has escaped unhurt, takes temporary command of the corps and quickly realizes that further assaults would be suicidal. About 5 pm he and Stephen Lee withdraw their troops, and the fighting subsides. Confederate casualties are estimated to be as high as 5,000 killed, wounded, or captured. (The Federals, protected by their improvised breastworks, have lost only about 600.) In just ten days under Hood, Confederate losses now exceed 18,000, or nearly one third of the 60,000-man force available when he took command. After nightfall near Ezra Church, a Federal picket calls out to the Confederate across the way: “Well, Johnny, how many of you are left?” Comes the answer, “Oh, about enough for another killing.”


North of the James River in Virginia, Hancock and Sheridan find that the Confederates have reinforced their positions. After some reconnaissance and minor fighting along Four-Mile Creek, the Federal expedition virtually ends. “We have failed in what I had hoped to accomplish,” Grant reports to Washington. And yet he has drawn four of Lee’s divisions back to the north side of the James. That means only three divisions, about 18,000 men, remain in the Petersburg works, and Meade should be ready to attack them. Thus, Grant ends his report, “I am yet in hopes of turning this diversion to account.” The lightly regarded project of blowing up an enemy fort suddenly takes on enormous importance.


Other fighting in Georgia is at Flat Rock Bridge, Lithonia, and near Campbellton. Along the Potomac, Federals make some command changes in order to better oppose Early’s new threat. Other action includes a skirmish at Long’s Mills near Mulberry Gap, Tennessee; a four-day Federal expedition from New Berne to Manning’s Neck, North Carolina; a two-day Federal scout around Cedar Bluff, Alabama; a skirmish on the Morgan’s Ferry Road near Morganza, Louisiana; and an action against Sioux Amerinds at Tahkahokuty Mountain in Dakota Territory.

[Doug64]

July 29, Friday

At Petersburg, Meade issues orders implementing Burnside’s plan for the explosion of the mine and an attack. it is to take place at dawn tomorrow. First, however, there will be a great deal of preliminary maneuvering. Major General Gouveneur K. Warren, holding the Federal left, is to concentrate as much of his V Corps as possible on his right, near Burnside’s corps; Hancock, returning with II Corps from north of the James, is to take Major General Edward O.C. Ord’s place on the right so that Ord’s XVIII Corps, reinforced by one division of X Corps, can support Burnside; and Sheridan is to take the Cavalry Corps all the way around Petersburg and make a secondary assault from the southwest. Federal cannon are concentrated at the main point of attack under the army’s chief of artillery, Brigadier General Henry J. Hunt. Meade tells Burnside to “spring his mine” at 3:30 am. Immediately thereafter he is to “move rapidly upon the breach, seize the crest in the rear and effect a lodgement there.” Warren will support Burnside on the left, Ord on the right. Meade also promises to get engineers from headquarters, since an assault across ground that has been the scene of trench warfare for a month is going to need their help.

Thus far, although the unfriendly relationship between Burnside and Meade, who had once been his subordinate, remains prickly at best, things are going well. But then, with less than 24 hours until jump-off, Burnside is enraged to learn that Meade has made changes to his plan. Meade insists that Burnside replace the division that he has chosen to lead the attack. This is a complicated issue. Several days ago, Burnside selected his freshest division, commanded by Brigadier General Edward Ferrero, to spearhead the advance. Burnside explained that his three other divisions have all been in the trenches and under fire for 36 days, during which time an average of thirty men have been killed or wounded every day. By contrast, Ferrero’s two brigades have been in the rear and have been able to rehearse their crucial role. The problem, as Meade sees it, is twofold. Ferrero’s men are not only fresh, they are completely inexperienced, having never been in battle. An assault on which so much depends, says Meade, should be led by the most experienced troops available. Even more significant, in Meade’s view, is that Ferrero’s men are Black—he leads the only division of US Colored Troops in the Army of the Potomac. It might be said, Meade fretted, “that we were shoving these people ahead to get killed because we did not care anything about them.” When Burnside insisted vehemently on his original plan, Meade consented to take the matter up with Grant. Hearing nothing, Burnside assumed that the matter had been dismissed, and he proceeded with his preparations. But at midmorning today, Meade drops a double bombshell. Not only has Grant agreed that the Black troops shouldn’t lead the attack, but Meade also orders that there be no lateral movements to clear the enemy trenches. Instead, the whole force is to drive straight ahead to the crest of Cemetery Hill.

Burnside is devastated. He has always excelled at making plans on paper, and this has been a good one; but he has never functioned well when forced to improvise, and Meade’s changes unravel him completely. Unwilling to choose among his three other division commanders—Brigadier Generals Robert Potter, James Ledlie, and Orlando Willcox—Burnside ducks the momentous responsibility by having them draw straws. The man thus selected to lead the assault is Ledlie, perhaps the least competent division commander in the Army of the Potomac, a known weakling, drinker, and coward. Burnside knows Ledlie’s reputation but gives him the critical assignment anyway. Far worse, he does nothing to prepare his troops for moving across the tangle of fortifications. Ignoring Meade’s specific orders, Burnside doesn’t see to the opening of his parapets and abatis for the attackers to pass through. The promised engineers from headquarters never materialize, and Burnside fails to order his own engineers to accompany the assault and help with the opening of the enemy works. He doesn’t even distribute entrenching tools for use on the bare hilltop that is the objective. He simply tells Ledlie to lead the way, with Potter following and bearing to the right, and Willcox next, bearing to the left. The rest is left to the division commanders—and to chance. During the afternoon Meade goes to Burnside’s headquarters to impress upon him and his senior commanders that the operation is “one purely of time.” They must gain the crest of Cemetery Hill quickly, before the enemy can recover from the confusion caused by the explosion. Failing that, Meade says, they must get back to their lines quickly; above all, they must not simply try to hold on to the shattered section of the enemy’s line. None of Meade’s imperatives have any effect on Burnside.


Though Stephen Lee’s and Alexander Stewart’s Confederates are badly bloodied, their presence near Ezra Church temporarily blocks Sherman’s planned advance on the Macon & Western Railroad. This gives new priority to the Federal cavalry raids that were launched on the 27th simultaneously with the infantry march toward Ezra Church. Sherman awaits word from these forays with some trepidation. He distrusts the ability of cavalrymen, with their derring-do tradition, to carry out such prosaic assignments. (The only horseman Sherman respects—and fears—is “that devil,” Nathan Bedford Forrest, who thinks and fights more like an infantryman than like a trooper.) The westernmost of the two Federal cavalry columns consists of 3,500 men under the command of Brigadier General Edward M. McCook. One of the famed “Fighting McCooks,” Edward is the 31-year-old first cousin of Daniel McCook Jr., the heroic infantry brigade leader who fell a month ago at Kennesaw Mountain.

McCook’s column rides southeastward from Chattahoochee River and today comes upon one of Hood’s wagon trains near Lovejoy’s Station. His raiders surprise and capture more than 400 Confederates, then burn 500 wagons and slaughter nearly 800 mules and horses. McCook is now supposed to rendevous with the other column of cavalry coming down east of Atlanta under Major General George Stoneman. But there is no sign of Stoneman and his 6,500 troopers. So McCook and his men go to work without the help they had anticipated, burning two trains and ripping up a couple of miles of the Macon & Western. Starting back, they meet the first of five brigades of Joseph Wheeler’s Confederate cavalry.


Cavalry of Jubal Early under John McCausland cross the Potomac west of Williamsport near Cave Spring, entering Maryland and Pennsylvania. Other Confederate cavalry demonstrate against Harpers Ferry. Another unit at Williamsport goes north to skirmish at Hagerstown, Maryland. Skirmishing also flares at Clear Spring, Maryland, and Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. Once more panic erupts among Northerners in the east. Union cavalry and other units respond to the new threat of Early’s men.


There is an affair at Highland Stockade near Baton Rouge and other action near Napoleonville, Louisiana. In Missouri, Federals carry out a five-day expedition from Warrensburg to Chapel Hill.

[Doug64]

July 30, Saturday

After a tense, wakeful night, Colonel Pleasants enters the tunnel at Petersburg at 3:15 am, lights the fuse, and comes running out. It should take fifteen minutes for the 98 feet of fuse to burn, but at 3:30 nothing happens. Another fifteen minutes pass and still nothing. It is impossible to know whether the fuse has gone out or is burning at a slower rate than expected. At 4:15 Pleasants allows two volunteers to go into the tunnel to investigate. The fuse had gone out at a splice. They relight it and sprint for safety. At 4:40 am, someone on the Federal line yells, “There she goes!” and another soldier will report feeling a “jar like an earthquake.” A Union staff officer will write that “a vast cloud of earth is borne upward, one hundred feet in the air, presenting the appearance of an outspread umbrella, descending in the twinkling of an eye with a heavy thud! Then, from hundreds of cannons’ mouths, with a deafening roar, the iron hail poured into the rebel lines.” The explosion obliterates the tip of Elliott’s Salient, which houses Pegram’s four-gun battery, and paralyzes half of Elliott’s brigade of infantry. At least 11 gunners of Pegram’s Battery, along with 256 men of two South Carolina regiments—the regiments flanking the guns—die in the blast. Scores of others are injured, many having been lofted into the air to fall to earth again with tons of dirt and debris. Colonel Fitz William McMaster of the regiment next to one of hammered regiments—also from South Carolina—will recall the men’s “utmost consternation” after the explosion. “Some scampered out of the lines; some, paralyzed with fear, vaguely scratched at the counterscarp as if trying to escape. Smoke and dust filled the air.”

The way into Petersburg lies open to Burnside and IX Corps. But the blast has disconcerted them almost as badly as it has the Confederates. The cloud raised by the explosion appears “as if it would descend immediately upon the troops waiting to make the charge.” Some of Ledlie’s men break and run to the rear. The others are too stunned to move. It takes ten minutes, perhaps more, before they are able to re-form and advance. Then the attackers pay the price for their commanders’ failure to open the fortifications. Hasty steps have to be fashioned with muskets so that the men can climb out of their own trenches. This effort destroys their formations, and the men, already deployed by the flank and forced to move forward in long columns, dash forward in ragged spurts, two or three at a time. They race the hundred yards across the open incline, clamber atop a 12-foot-high wall of dirt thrown up by the explosion, look over—and are transfixed.

Where Pegram’s redan had been, there yawns an enormous hole, 200 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 25 to 30 feet deep in the center: the Crater. It is filled “with dust, blocks of clay, guns, broken carriages, projecting timbers, and men buried in various ways—some up to their necks, others to their waists, and some with only their feet and legs protruding from the easth.” Most of the entombed are dead, but some are emerging from their shock and struggling to break free. What little sense of purpose and organization the Federals had possessed as they straggled forward now evaporates. The men of Ledlie’s lead brigade stand on the rim of the Crater, gawking. This forces the regiments behind them to mill around in confusion until the brigade commander, Colonel Elisha G. Marshall, roars at them to make their way down into the Crater. Here too, the men simply mill about, extricating wounded Confederates and hunting souvenirs.

A portion of Colonel Marshall’s brigade clambers up the far side of the Crater and begins to form up for a further advance. Beyond the Crater the Federals see “a perfect honeycomb of bomb proofs, trenches, covered ways, sleeping holes and little alleys running in every direction,” all partially filled with debris from the explosion. Behind the honeycomb, forming a rear wall to the area of devastation, stands the newly built cavalier and retrenchment. With much difficulty, Colonel Marshall gets his men into rough battle lines and pushes into the trenches and covered ways. A New York Heavy Artillery regiment finds that one of the fort’s cannon and its magazine, though partly buried, remains serviceable. The Federals dig out the gun and begin to fire at the Confederates visible in the rear. To the right of the Crater, Lieutenant Colonel Gilbert P. Robinson of the 3rd Maryland Battalion pushes his way into the Confederate trench with parties of skirmishers. The Marylanders, armed with Spencer rifles, are able to force their way 300 yards forward, leapfrogging from traverse to traverse.

But by this time, the Confederates in the trenches on either side of the Crater have recovered. The dusty survivors of the South Carolina regiment to the south of the Crater, directed by their only remaining officer, Captain James N. Shedd, throw up a barricade of sandbags across the main trench south of the breach. To the north, the other South Carolina regiment spreads out into the connecting trenches and traverses, hoping to confine the attackers to the Crater.

At this point the Federal cause sorely needs a measure of leadership, but it isn’t to come from General Ledlie. He is huddled in a bombproof far to the rear, comforting himself with a bottle of rum. He sits there in safety while his division falls into confusion and the divisions of Potter and Willcox trickle forward past him.

Federal artillerists opened fire with 160 guns immediately after the mine exploded, to keep the enemy’s guns from firing effectively at the advancing infantry. Nevertheless, two Confederate batteries—one 400 yards south of the Crater, the other about 500 yards to the north—unleash a vicious crossfire on the slope between the Crater and the Federal lines. From a hillside 300 yards south of the Crater, Colonel John T. Goode forms his Virginia regiment in a ditch running perpendicular to the Confederate trench. From there it can open an enfilading fire on any Federals attempting to form in the open ground behind the Crater. Nearby, a single gun opens with canister from the front-line trench into the flank of Federal troops advancing toward the Crater.

General Potter’s division has tried to bear to the right of Ledlie’s advance across the deadly field, but it has encountered resistance from Elliott’s surviving South Carolinians. The attacking soldiers plunge into the confusing maze of covered ways, rifle pits, and trenches. Disoriented, intermixed with the enemy and fighting hand to hand, they get no farther. As Lieutenant Powell will recall, “There were so many angles and traverses there that in one there were Union troops while in the next there were Confederates. I saw myself the muskets of both sides almost cross at the angles, while the men were obscured from each other.” General Willcox’s division is similarly stalled on the left of the Crater, unable to advance beyond its own lines. About 7 am, Brigadier General John W. Turner, whose X Corps division has been temporarily assigned to Ord’s XVIII Corps, reaches the front. He is blocked by a mass of soldiers and dashes to the Crater to reconnoiter. He will later write that inside the cavity “every point that could give cover to a man was occupied. There was no movement toward Cemetery Hill: The troops were all in confusion and lying down.” Turner sees Ferrero’s Black infantry appear at the lip of the Crater. Ferrero is absent: he has stopped to keep General Ledlie company in the bombproof. The Black troops, Turner will recall, “literally came falling over into this crater on their hands and knees; they were so thick in there that a man could not walk.” Disgusted by the turmoil, Turner goes back to the main Federal lines and learns that General Meade has ordered both Ord and Warren to attack, on either side of IX Corps. Accordingly, Turner pushes his brigades toward the right of the Crater.

Three hours have passed since the explosion of the mine, and the Federals have only succeeded in cramming an estimated 10,000 troops into the area of the Crater. Meanwhile, the Confederates are on the verge of mounting a counterattack. General Elliott survived the explosion, but he fell wounded after ordering the two South Carolina regiments to leave the trenches north of the Crater and defend the open ground to the rear. Colonel McMaster took over Elliott’s brigade and organized a fragile line across the throat of the blasted salient in the retrenchment 200 yards to the rear. McMaster posted a second, even thinner line in a ravine 100 yards to the west. For three hours, these few hundred scattered troops have been all that stand between the Army of the Potomac and the streets of Petersburg. General Lee rushed to the field at 6 am and ordered General William Mahone, whose division holds the Confederate right, to send two of his brigades north to reinforce Bushrod Johnson’s threatened division at the Crater. Mahone responded immediately, saying, “I can’t send my brigades to General Johnson—I will go with them myself.” On reaching Johnson’s headquarters on the Jerusalem Plank Road, however, Mahone is shocked to see the commander of the breached line sitting down to breakfast, evincing little interest in what is going on at the front. When Mahone asks to be shown the way to the Crater, Johnson details a lieutenant to guide Mahone and returns to his breakfast. Peppered by Federal shot and shell from the continuing bombardment, Mahone takes his brigades north along the Jerusalem Plank Road to a covered way that leads to the left toward the location of Wright’s Battery. Halfway there they turn southeast, filing into the ravine held by McMaster’s reserves. There Brigadier General Davis A. Weisiger’s Virginia brigade of Mahone’s division forms a line of battle and Brigadier General Ambrose R. Wright’s Georgians start to file in behind them to take position on their right. It is approximately 8:30 am. The Virginians face a daunting sight. Behind the lip of the Crater, the battle flags seem “almost as thick as cornstalks in a row.” The whole face of the earth, including the ditch the Confederates formerly occupied, fairly teems with the enemy. Mahone orders his men to fix bayonets, to prepare to charge, and to hold their fire until they reach the enemy line 200 yards away.

Meanwhile, in the Crater, the brigade commanders of the Black troops, Colonels Henry G. Thomas and Joshua K. Sigfried, receive new orders from General Ferrero’s hideout in the rear. Advance, says Ferrero grandly, and take the crest of Cemetery Hill. Struggling mightily to push his troops through the sea of stalled men—three entire divisions of them—Colonel Thomas manages to get two of his regiments and part of a third, perhaps 200 men in all, formed up beyond the Crater, and orders them to charge. Remarkably, they do. Wright’s brigade is not yet in line of battle when Weisiger’s Virginians hear the shout and see the Federal charge begin. But the Confederates know immediately that if they don’t halt this movement in its tracks, the momentum of the Federal column will sweep it away. The men spring to their feet and cry, “Charge, boys!” and away they go over the field. The Confederate infantry isn’t yet firing, but the moment the Black troops come over the parapet they are in the sights of a battery deployed along the Jerusalem Plank Road 500 yards to the west. These guns stagger the attacking troops. The two infantry charges collide in the warren of Confederate rifle pits and trenches west and north of the Crater. The attacking Federals are heavily outnumbered outside of the Crater, and they receive no reinforcements from within it. One officer who is trying to get the men cowering at the bottom of the Crater to move forward will later write, “You might as well have tried to get bees out of a hive and form them into battle.” Isolated and hit hard, the Black regiments lose heart, break, and run. Mahone’s Confederates are close behind them. The Confederates are startled, then enraged, to discover that they are fighting Black troops. Many of the Confederates won’t accept surrender from a Black. The Confederate charge has struck just as General Turner is leading his division forward on Burnside’s right. The precipitous flight of the Black troops breaks the line of IX Corps soldiers in the ditch north of the Crater, and they in turn touch off a stampede by two of Turner’s brigades, which flee back to the main Union line.

The Federals near the crest of the Crater are loading and firing as fast as they can. The men are dropping thick and fast, most of them shot through the head. Every man shot rolls down the steep sides to the bottom, and in places they pile up three and four deep. The cries of the wounded, pressed down under the dead, are “piteous in the extreme.” One of General Potter’s officers, Colonel George W. Field, commanding a Rhode Island regiment, has held a position about 100 yards behind the Crater. Mahone’s attack forces his command back, and Field tries to get his men to rescue several of the regiment’s wounded. “Who will follow me?” he shouts. With sword uplifted, he advances one step and falls dead. The Confederates continue to roll forward. From the Crater’s south end, a covered way extends west to the retrenchment 200 yards away, and now the Virginians are driving up this travers to within twenty yards of the Crater itself. Ordered to build a breastwork across the mouth of the traverse, the Federals begin by throwing up lumps of clay, but it is slow work. Someone calls out, “Put in the dead men,” and a large number of dead, White and Black, Union and rebel, are piled into the trench. This makes a partial shelter, from which the Federals stop the Confederate advance.

For nearly five hours General Meade, back at Burnside’s headquarters with General Grant, has been trying frantically to get from Burnside—who is at a forward command post with a 14-gun battery on his main line—some indication of what is happening. Meade has ordered a telegraph line strung between the two locations, but despite this capacity he cannot get Burnside to give him any news. “What is the delay in your column moving?” Meade asked at 6:50 am; and forty minutes later he demanded, “What is the obstacle?” When Burnside did respond he dissembled: “The main body of General Potter’s division is beyond the Crater.” He evades the issue of speed: “I am fully alive to the importance of it.” And he took umbrage: “The latter remark of your note was unofficerlike and ungentlemanly.” Not until 9 am does Burnside transmit any definite information, and then it is stunning: “Many of the Ninth and Eighteenth Corps are retiring before the enemy.” Meade is appalled. “That was the first information I had received,” he will later say, “that there had been any collision with the enemy, or that there was any enemy present.” At 9:30 he tells Generals Burnside and Ord that they ought to retreat, “taking every precaution to get the men back safely.” At 9:45 he makes the order to Burnside peremptory: Withdraw to your own intrenchements.” Meade leaves it to Burnside to pick the time, but for eleven hours he won’t get an acknowledgement, a reply, or any further information from the IX Corps commander.

At 10 am, Mahone unleashes Wright’s Georgia brigade. It is supposed to charge the fifty yards of captured Confederate entrenchments south of the Crater, on the right of the Virginia brigade. The advance runs into such withering fire, however, that the Georgians are deflected to their left and come in behind the Virginians. But the Federals in the Crater are losing the will to continue the fight. The day has become unbearably hot, and the canteens are empty; the Confederates now open with additional mortars, which have been brought up to extremely close range. A few Federals try to run back to their lines, just 100 yards away. But to leave, they have to run up a slope in full view of the enemy that now surrounds them on three sides; nearly every man who attempts it falls back riddled with bullets. The same fate befalls those who try to bring water or ammunition into the Crater. With two brigades, General Mahone has immobilized three Federal corps. Burnside’s IX Corps is cowering leaderless in and around the Crater; on its right, Ord’s XVIII Corps has been driven back to the main Federal lines; and on its left, Warren’s V Corps has never been able to mount an attack. the cannonading continues, but the musketry now becomes desultory. The opposing lines, in many cases huddled on either side of the same embankment, take to spearing each other by lofting muskets with fixed bayonets over the crest. It seems to Colonel McMaster, “the laziest fight I ever saw; we longed for hand grenades.” Now Brigadier General John C.C. Sanders’ Alabama brigade comes up to Mahone’s position in the ravine, and at 1 pm Mahone orders it to charge the Crater. Sanders’ men are joined by a North Carolina regiment, and one of the beleaguered South Carolina regiments. By now Burnside has at last responded to Meade’s withdrawal order—by telling the hapless brigade commanders in the Crater to get out as best they can. They are trying to figure out how to do this when the fresh Confederates pour over the rim of the Crater. Some of the Federals have no choice but to fight hand to hand; others try to surrender, while several hundred simply run for their lives. The slaughter is fearful, especially among unarmed and unresisting Blacks. In some places, it will be said, the dead are piled eight deep before the remaining Federals surrender. By 2 pm or shortly thereafter the battle is over.

General Lee reports crisply to Richmond: “We have retaken the salient and driven the enemy back to his lines with loss.” Within hours, the Confederates are entrenching a new line—in front of the Crater. “It was the saddest affair I have witnessed in the War,” Grant will wire to Halleck tomorrow. He counts 3,500 men killed, wounded, or missing, compared with Confederate losses of about 1,500, and he has no gains to show for it. The attack has been a fumble from the beginning, and though Grant had done little to assure success of the plan, he demands an immediate court of inquiry. The court will lay the blame on General Burnside, for failing to form a proper line of battle, for neglecting to open a path through the Federal obstacles, for not using engineers to negotiate the enemy entrenchments, and for disobeying several of Meade’s orders. Once again, Burnside is relieved of command. The court also censures Generals Ledlie and Ferrero for hiding out in their bombproof and General Willcox for lack of leadership. Grant believes that the failure to take Petersburg, and perhaps end the war, is inexcusable. “Such opportunity for carrying fortifications I have never seen,” he tells Halleck, “and do not expect again to have.”


In specific retaliation for General Hunter’s burning of the homes of three prominent Virginians during his operations in the Shenandoah Valley, Jubal Early sends two brigades of cavalry under John McCausland to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. McCausland threatens to burn the town unless its merchants pay him $500,000 (2020 $8,242,410) in currency or $100,000 (2020 $ 1,648,482) in gold. The 3,000 inhabitants can’t raise such a sum so McCausland evacuates them and sets fire to the business district before moving west to McConnellsburg. Averall’s Federals soon pursue the Confederates. Other places in Early’s path see skirmishing, including Emmitsburg, Monocacy Junction, and near Shepherdstown, West Virginia.


General McCook’s raiding Federal cavalry are surrounded near Newman, thirty miles southwest of Atlanta, and McCook orders his units to break out in any direction possible. Over the next few days, remnants of his column will straggle back to the Chattahoochee—minus the prisoners taken earlier, and minus 600 of their own men, killed or captured. By then, the Confederates will have repaired the Macon & Western line that McCook’s troopers tore up.

And what of General Stoneman, who missed his appointed rendezvous with McCook at Lovejoy’s Station yesterday? Just before Stoneman set out from Decatur, he prevailed upon Sherman to let him undertake an additional mission far more exciting than railroad wrecking. After joining McCook at Lovejoy’s Station to cut the Macon & Western, he would ride south to Macon and liberate the Union prisoners being held in the jail there; then he would continue seventy miles farther southwest and free the roughly 30,000 Federal captives at the notorious Andersonville camp. Neither Sherman nor Stoneman have any plan for what to do with these sick and weakened prisoners if they are freed, but that seems no deterrent. Stoneman realizes that such a coup would electrify the North and redeem his own ill-starred reputation. Once a West Pointer of some promise, he is now considered, at the age of 41, a kind of distinguished failure—a reject from the Army of the Potomac, a man whose poor performance at Chancellorsville contributed to Hooker’s defeat there.

In fact, Stoneman is so intent on the glorious possibilities of the second half of his mission that he decided to skip the railroad-wrecking part. Soon after leaving Decatur, he detached Kenner Garrard’s 4,00-man division—ostensibly to guard the army’s left flank—and then rode straight for Macon with 2,500 troopers. He reaches the east bank of the Ocmulgee River opposite Macon today. Unable to find a crossing, Stoneman starts shelling the town. Armed residents and two regiments of state militia return the fire. After an engagement lasting several hours, Stoneman heads back the way he came. Meanwhile, troopers Stoneman sent east of Macon torch a couple of railroad bridges and burn 27 cars of a freight train.


Elsewhere, fighting erupts at Paint Rock Station, Alabama; Clifton, Tennessee; Bayou Tenses, Louisiana; Hay Station No. 3 near Brownsville and at Pine Bluff, Arkansas; and a scout by Federals in Phelps and Maries counties, Missouri. Confederate forces reoccupy Brownsville, Texas, after some skirmishing nearby.

President Lincoln leaves Washington for Fort Monroe to confer with General Grant.

[Doug64]

July 31, Sunday

Confederate cavalry, after burning Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, are now fully occupied with Averell’s pursuing Federals. At Hancock, Maryland, on the Potomac, Averell attacks McCausland’s Southerners, who pull out to the northwest at Cumberland, Maryland. Otherwise, the month ends quietly, with an affair at Orange Grove near Donaldsonville, Louisiana, and an action near Fort Smith, Arkansas. Meanwhile, at Petersburg, the lines are being reestablished in the area of the huge crater.


General Grant and President Lincoln have a long, private meeting at Fort Monroe, Virginia. It is a dark moment for the Union war effort. General Jubal Early and his Confederates have been prevented from capturing Washington only at the eleventh hour, and “Old Jube” is still at large, causing havoc. Virtually all of the Shenandoah Valley is back in Confederate hands, mocking every Federal effort to seize it. For three weeks, Grant has been trying to get someone to take charge of the army units in and around Washington and chase Early to the ground. But his attempts to create a unified command have been snarled in the tangle of four separate military departments into which the area from Washington to West Virginia—including the vital Shenandoah—has been divided. Frustrated beyond endurance, Grant has appealed directly to the President. “All I ask,” Grant implored, “is that one general officer, in whom I and yourself have confidence, should command the whole.” Immediately, Lincoln set out for Fort Monroe to meet his general in chief. Neither man will ever speak later about what they discuss. But ensuing events testify to an even closer alliance between the two rough-hewn Westerners.


General Stoneman’s Federal cavalry retreating to Decatur don’t get far. Joseph Wheeler neatly divided his force to deal with both Stoneman and McCook, and he has been in hot pursuit. Today, the Confederate troopers catch up with Stoneman’s riders near Clinton, 28 miles northeast of Macon, Georgia. It isn’t long before Stoneman concludes that he is surrounded. He orders two brigades to cut their way out while he stages a last stand with the rest of the division. Those troopers hold off the Confederates long enough for the two brigades to escape. Then Stoneman surrenders his remaining 700 men and winds up a prisoner in the Macon jail he had intended to liberate.

[Doug64]

August 1864

Many aspects of the war have changed immensely since May. In Virginia the entire outlook is vitally different. With Petersburg under severe partial siege, Richmond and the Confederate government are seriously threatened as well. The defense lines look solid but Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia is badly outnumbered. In the Shenandoah Early can expect concentrated opposition. In Georgia, Atlanta, too, is under a form of siege and Hood appears no more successful against Sherman than Joseph E. Johnston had been. Dissension increases in political circles.

For the North the victories of midsummer have been encouraging, but there, too, dissension is rife. Radicals on one side and peace elements on the other badger the Lincoln administration. The cost in manpower of Grant’s campaign is both a political issue and a true concern. Since Grant hasn’t taken Petersburg and Richmond and ended the war, many face with dread the prospect of another fall and winter of conflict.

August 1, Monday

Something seems terribly wrong with the Army of the Potomac. The most visible problem is the army’s extreme weariness after three months of savage campaigning; the constant work and alarms of trench warfare make rest and recuperation impossible. Attrition from casualties and expired enlistments continue, and by now the Army of the Potomac’s effective strength has been reduced to fewer than 40,000 men. Moreover, the replacements are of the worst imaginable quality: sullen draftees, paid substitutes, and bounty jumpers—all with little training and less motivation. The enervation of the army is made worse by a pervasive rancor that infects its second-echelon leaders. The provost marshal general, Brigadier General Marsena Patrick, laments the jealousy of the corps commanders “against each other and against Meade.” Patrick, ever the pessimist, had accurately predicted the failure of the mine attack two days ago. “The bad blood that exists between Meade and Burnside,” he had warned, would prevent “unanimity of counsels or concert of action.” Officers still loyal to Major General George B. McClellan, the army’s deposed commander, dislike the newly arrived Grant men; the Westerners in turn deride the Easterners, and everyone seems to disparage Meade, spreading rumors that he is about to be relieved or transferred. Nor is Grant immune. One general accuses him—again—of getting drunk; another compares his detached style of leadership to that of Nero fiddling while Rome burned.

As sulphurous as are the Union army’s rivalries, the national politics with which they are entwined are worse. With the presidential election three months away, the army is split by the continuing devotion of some to the likely Democratic candidate, General McClellan, and the loyalty of others to the incumbent Commander in Chief, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln supporters are especially dismayed by the failure of the army to achieve a clear victory in the spring campaign and by its ability to protect Washington from Jubal Early’s raid or to punish Early for his audacity, evidenced by his cavalry boldly riding into Pennsylvania and burning the town of Chambersburg on the same day as the disaster at the Crater.

The pressure on Grant is enormous. Yet every time he tries to rid himself of an incompetent general, such as Benjamin Butler, or to reorganize the commands around Washington, whose inefficiency has paralyzed the pursuit of Early, he is stymied by equally strong pressures to avoid offending important political constituencies. Grant appears unaffected by either the reverses in the field or the rivalries in camp. “We will peg away, and end this matter,” he writes to a boyhood friend. “Everything looks favorable.” Grant simply ignores most of the squabbling among his corps commanders and staff officers. But with the same quiet relentlessness he shows in battle, he bears down on those problems that interfere with his destruction of the enemy.

Thus, the morning after his long meeting with the President, Grant rams home a solution for the problem that Early is posing. He informs chief of staff Henry Halleck that he is sending north the commander of the Potomac’s Cavalry Corps, 33-year-old Major General Philip H. Sheridan, and that the four departments should be merged into one. Major General David Hunter, as the senior officer in the region, can stay on as the administrative head of the new department. But, writes Grant, “I want Sheridan put in command of all the troops in the field, with instructions to put himself south of the enemy and follow him to the death.” Sheridan is then to lay waste to the Shenandoah Valley. There is little use for cavalrymen in trench warfare and a great need for them in running Early to ground; therefore, Sheridan takes with him two of the army’s three divisions of troopers. With the Army of the Shenandoah augmented by VI Corps, XIX Corps, and the two cavalry divisions, Sheridan will go after Early with almost 40,000 men.

Robert E. Lee cannot afford to lose either his Shenandoah granary or Early’s corps. Despite the fact that Confederate manpower on the Richmond-Petersburg line is already stretched impossibly thin, Lee finds a way to help Early. He sends Major General J.B. Kershaw’s division of infantry from Anderson’s corps and Fitzhugh Lee’s cavalry division to Culpeper, where they will be in position to move to the Valley or return to Richmond, wherever the danger is greater. Lee knows his opponent by now; he doesn’t doubt for a moment that trouble is coming, and soon.


McCausland’s cavalry, successful in its expedition against Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, engage the Federal garrison at Cumberland, Maryland. McCausland is now in trouble, with more Federals closing in. there is also an affair at Flintstone Creek near Cumberland. In the Richmond-Petersburg area, the siege goes on with a skirmish at Deep Bottom, Virginia, amid indications that soon Grant will try to cut the railroads still bringing supplies to the Confederate capital.

Otherwise there is a series of scouts and expeditions, largely by Union forces. Operations in southwest Missouri, which last for most of August, include a skirmish at Diamond Grove Prairie. Also in Missouri, skirmishes occur at Rolla and near Independence, and Federals scout out toward Gunter’s Mills. A Union scout probes against Amerinds near Smoky Hill Fork, Kansas. Federals operating in eastern Arkansas skirmish at Lamb’s Plantation. After a skirmish at Athens, Tennessee, Federals pursue the Confederates into North Carolina. For six days a Federal scout operates from Strawberry Plains to Greeneville, Tennessee. For most of the month a Union expedition marches from La Grange, Tennessee, to Oxford, Mississippi; and there are considerable operations in eastern Kentucky with a skirmish near Bardstown, Kentucky. Sherman’s guns shell Atlanta.

[Doug64]

August 2, Tuesday

Early’s cavalry under McCausland fights again at Hancock, Maryland, as they seek to recross the Potomac after their Chambersburg raid, with skirmishing at Old Town, Maryland, and Green Spring Run, West Virginia. At Mobile the obvious build-up of Federal naval forces continues. Of the two remaining Confederate ports, Mobile, Alabama, and Wilmington, North Carolina, Mobile will be easier to attack. But it does have two well-paced forts at the mouth of the bay and a fairly powerful Confederate naval armament. A Federal reconnaissance moves from Berwick to Pattersonville, Louisiana, and nine days of operations take place near Holden, Missouri.

Confederate naval officials decide it is impossible to get CSS Rappahannock, laid up at Calais, out to sea as a raider. The French will allow her only a thirty-five-man crew.

[Doug64]

August 3, Wednesday

Federal land forces land on Dauphin Island and invest Fort Gaines at the entrance to Mobile Bay. However, the fort remains in Confederate hands, guarding the entrance from the west, along with Fort Morgan on the east. McCausland has made good his escape from Maryland to West Virginia with part of Early’s command. In Georgia Federal troops increase their pressure on Atlanta by crossing Utoy Creek, fighting at Sunshine Church, Frogtown, Jug Tavern, and Mulberry Creek. Meanwhile, the cavalry units sent out by Sherman run into opposition. On the southern Virginia front action erupts near Wilcox’s Landing. Elsewhere, action involves skirmishes at Triune, Tennessee; a four-day Federal scout from Cumberland Gap, Tennessee, into Lee County, Virginia, and to Tazewell, Tennessee; operations about Woodville, Tennessee; a skirmish near Fayette, Missouri; and a series of Union scouts until November from Fort Sumner, New Mexico Territory.

Lincoln, annoyed by the inaction of officers in the Shenandoah, tells Grant that his idea of following the enemy “to the death” “will neither be done nor attempted unless you watch it every day, and hour, and force it.” As a result of the message, Grant will go to Washington tomorrow to see what can be done. General Sheridan reaches Washington to take over in the Shenandoah.

[Doug64]

August 4, Thursday

By this summer, the Federals have taken all but two of their principal objectives in the coastal war. The remaining targets are the Confederates’ last major ports, one on the Atlantic, and the other on the Gulf. Fort Fisher, commanding the entrance to the Cape Fear River and the port of Wilmington, North Carolina, has to be captured in order to cut off the last trickle of European supplies bound for General Robert E. Lee’s beleaguered army. And Mobile Bay has to be wrested from Confederate control to furnish a sheltered harbor for the US Navy’s West Gulf Blockading Squadron and clear the way for a large-scale land assault on Mobile itself, thirty miles up the bay.

Mobile Bay is the first of these climactic operations to mature. It has been a long time coming: The target has been high on Washington’s priority list since the early months of the war. An attack seemed to be in the offing during May last year, after Flag Officer David Farragut captured New Orleans. But before he could move on Mobile Bay, Farragut was sent north to besiege Vicksburg, a campaign that kept him occupied for more than a year. Finally, last January, with the entire Mississippi in Federal hands, Farragut—now a rear admiral—arrived off Mobile Bay to mount the operation. And still, he has had to mark time for several months assembling the ships and men he needs for a rigorous campaign.

Mobile Bay presents the admiral with a variety of thorny problems. Though the bay stretches far inland, its entrance is only three miles wide. Fort Gaines, on Dauphin Island, guards the western side of this entrance; a smaller passage, north of Dauphin Island, is blocked by tiny Fort Powell and impassable obstructions. Stretching eastward from Fort Gaines are a series of sunken pilings that effectively close more than a mile and a half of the entrance to the bay. Beyond the pilings, the channel is further narrowed by shallow water and submerged mines, or torpedoes—scores of beer kegs and tin cones filled with explosives and fitted with either tubes of fulminate or percussion caps, which can detonate the charge when struck by a ship’s hull. The eastern edge of the mine field is marked by a red buoy that warns blockade runners to hug Mobile Point, 200 yards away. Here is a narrow opening for Farragut. But on Mobile Point, looming above the constricted passageway, stands Fort Morgan. The fort, commanded by Brigadier General Richard L. Page, a cousin of Robert E. Lee, is a massive red-brick pentagon whose three tiers boast forty guns, some of them large enough to blast gaping holes in the sides of Farragut’s wooden ships. In addition, seven big cannon are emplaced at water level. An invading fleet will have to pass directing under the bastion’s guns. Yet Farragut plans to run this gauntlet into the bay, where a Confederate flotilla is known to be lurking. After destroying the Confederate ships, he will turn back and force the forts to surrender by bombardment and siege.

Farragut has delayed his attack largely out of concern for one particularly dangerous Confederate vessel. A shipyard at Selma, 150 miles up the Alabama river from Mobile, has recently built a huge ironclad ram, the 209-foot-long Tennessee, and sent her downstream into Mobile Bay. She is yet another of the Confederate ironclads that have been supposed to break the blockade and turn the tide of the war at sea. Like her precursors, the Tennessee has several shortcomings. She is slow, hard to maneuver, and vulnerable at certain vital points. All the same, she is a powerful vessel and a daunting threat to Farragut’s wooden fleet. The Tennessee’s casemate, which houses her crew and six big Brooke rifles, is 79 feet long and 29 feet wide; it is made of thick oak and pine, and armored with three layers of tough, malleable iron bolted together. The iron plating, like the eaves of a house, extend outward and downward before curving inward to meet the hull again four feet below the water line. The hollow this creates is filled with more timber, making the vessel almost invulnerable amidships. The Tennessee has another asset that makes her doubly dangerous. This is her captain, Admiral Franklin Buchanan, who also commands the three wooden gunboats—the Morgan, the Gaines, and the Selma—assigned to defend the bay. At the age of 64, Buchanan is a year older than Farragut and every bit as aggressive. He proved his mettle as captain of the ironclad Virginia (formerly the Merrimac) when she wreaked havoc in Hampton Roads and fought the Monitor to a standstill. “Old Buck,” as Farragut calls his longtime associate in the prewar Navy, is widely considered a master at handling ironclads, and Farragut shares that view. In fact, Buchanan haunts him. Farragut will later write of his “six months constantly watching day and night for an enemy; to know him to be as brave, as skilful, and as determined as myself; who was pledged to his Government and the South to drive me away and raise the blockade and free the Mississippi from our rule.”

To combat Buchanan’s Tennessee on more equal terms, Farragut asked the Navy Department to send him several monitors—“damned tea-kettles,” he calls them. The Navy promised him four monitors, but they have been slow in arriving, and so has been the force of 2,000 soldiers that Farragut called for to “stop up the back door” of his naval assault. Finally, last month, the monitors began to trickle in. first came the Manhattan from the Atlantic Coast, its single turret girded in ten inches of iron and carrying two 15-inchers. Then the Chickasaw arrived from New Orleans, followed the next day by the Winnebago, each of them double-turreted with two 11-inchers in each turret. The Manhattan’s sister ship, the Tecumseh, didn’t make it until today, the eve of the battle, and almost gets left out. By now, the Army troops under Major General Gordon Granger have been put ashore near Fort Gaines.

According to Farragut’s plan of attack, the four monitors will take the lead. Their shallow draft will permit them to travel close to the shore, and their armor and low profiles will protect them from Fort Monroe’s guns. The wooden ships will follow slightly behind and to the left of the monitors, using them as a buffer. Farragut has fourteen wooden ships in all: eight big screw sloops, a screw steamer, and five small gunboats. Because the flotilla will have to pass so close to the fort, each of the smaller and more vulnerable ships is lashed to the port side of a larger one, which will duel Fort Morgan with her starboard broadside. In this symbiotic relationship, the smaller vessels will act as tugs if their consorts’ engines are shot up. Once out of range of Fort Morgan’s guns, the cables connecting the paired vessels will be cut and each will take its allotted place in the action. The wooden flotilla will be led by the 24-gun Brooklyn, which is equipped with four chase guns on her bow and a mine-sweeping device. To the Brooklyn is lashed the gunboat Octorara. Following in order will come Farragut’s Hartford and her mate, the Metacomet, then the Richmond and the Port Royal, the Lackawanna and the Seminole, the Monongahela and the Kennebec, the Ossipee and the Itasca, and finally the Oneida and the Galena.

As darkness falls on Farragut’s fleet this night, the officers and crews make final preparations for the attack, then sit down to write letters to their loved ones. Many men are less than optimistic about facing the 47 guns of Fort Morgan while traversing a channel only 200 yards wide, and they write with a sense of final leavetaking. Farragut, quietly reverent, places himself in the hands of his Maker. When an officer suggests that the men be issued a ration of grog to stiffen their resolve, the admiral replies briskly: “No, sir! I never found that I needed rum to enable me to do my duty. I will order two cups of good coffee to each man at two o’clock, and at eight o’clock I will pipe all hands to breakfast in Mobile Bay.”


Early’s men still skirmish at Antietam Ford, Maryland, with action at New Creek, West Virginia, as the Confederate force remains a bane of the Federals in Virginia. Action occurs near Harrison’s Landing, Virginia, and a skirmish breaks out at Tracy City, Tennessee. There are ten days of operations in and around Brazos Santiago, Texas, and a three-day Federal expedition from Natchez, Mississippi, to Gillespie’s Plantation, Louisiana. Firing on Fort Sumter by Federals continues until the 23rd but slackens. Federals continue crossing Utoy Creek on the west side of Atlanta in their slow extension of the siege line toward the south side of the city. General Grant leaves City Point for Washington and Frederick, Maryland, to straighten out plans to thwart Early.

The first report of the capture of General Stoneman’s cavalry comes to Sherman today in the form of a Richmond newspaper sent by Ulysses Grant. After the troopers who evade capture straggle in and confirm the story, Sherman will dryly tell Washington, “On the whole, the cavaly raid is not deemed a success.”

[Doug64]

August 5, Friday

At dawn outside Mobile Bay, the Federal ships draw up in order of battle. They are stripped of all superfluous spars and rigging in order to achieve maximum speed and maneuverability. Chains have been hung over their sides and sandbags stacked to protect their vital parts. To a Confederate observer, they appear “like prize fighters ready for the ring.” The Confederates are waiting for the attack. aboard the Tennessee, at anchor near Fort Morgan. Admiral Buchanan is roused from bed at 5:45. He runs on deck to have a look at the advancing Federal fleet. Then he orders all hands to assemble on the gun deck, where he begins a short speech: “Now, men, the enemy is coming, and I want you to do your duty.” He closes with the injunction: “If I fall, lay me on the side and go on with the fight.”

At 6:45, the lead monitor Tecumseh fires one of her 15-inchers toward Fort Morgan to test the range. By 7:15, Farragut’s ships are steaming into the narrow passage, and the firing has gotten intense. Fort Morgan’s guns are pounding away at the flotilla, and Farragut’s broadsides are punishing the fort. At this critical time, the Federals find themselves on the brink of disaster. The sluggish monitors, making only a few knots, are being overtaken by the faster wooden ships. The Brooklyn stops short to avoid passing the ironclads. Her captain, James Alden, has no desire to face the Tennessee without their protection. The Hartford and the other ships behind are forced to slow precipitously to avoid collision. But to halt is even more dangerous, for the ships are piling up directly under Fort Morgan’s guns. Captain Alden sends the Hartford an obvious signal: “The monitors are right ahead; we cannot go on without passing them.” In exasperation, Farragut signals back, “Order the monitors ahead and go on.” But the Brooklyn doesn’t move; worse, she drifts broadside across the channel, blocking the way.

Up ahead, Captain Tunis Craven of the monitor Tecumseh has a problem of his own: He fears that his awkward ship is going to run aground on the turbulent shoals directly inder Fort Morgan. Looking to the deep channel beyond the red buoy, Craven decides to maneuver his ship through the torpedoes. Remarking to his pilot, “It is impssible that the admiral means us to go inside that buoy,” he orders the Tecumseh to bear hard to port. Moments after the ship enters the danger area, her vulnerable underbelly strikes a torpedo. She goes down swiftly. Some of the crewmen scramble up the ladder to escape the sinking ship. Captain Craven and his pilot pause at the foot of the ladder. “After you, Pilot,” Craven says. The pilot accepts the offer and makes his way out, but as he will later testify, “there was nothing after me.” The captain and all but 21 of the 113-man complement go down with the Tecumseh.

Admiral Farragut is watching the battle from a lofty position aboard his flagship. He has been unable to see much from the deck because of the low-hanging pall of smoke from the guns. So, ignoring the danger, he climbs the rigging of the mainmast and stations himself just below the maintop platform. The Hartford’s captain, Percival Drayton, sends a man up to lash Farragut safely to the rigging. There, above the battle’s din, the admiral relays orders down to the deck. With the Brooklyn stalled and holding up the line, the wooden ships are taking a terrific pounding from both Fort Morgan and the four Confederate vessels just inside the bay. Aboard the Hartford, the carnage is appalling. Shot after shot comes through the side, mowing down the men, deluging the decks with blood and scattering mangled fragments of humanity so thickly that it is difficult to stand on the deck, so slippery is it. The bodies of the dead are placed in a long row on the port side, while the wounded are sent below. Blood and flesh from the Hartford spatters the deck of the Metacomet, lashed to the flagship’s side.

Farragut watches the gory stalemate with anger and desperation. The Hartford is still being blocked by the motionless Brooklyn, and unless the Brooklyn moves on, he will have to order the ships to follow the Tecumseh’s course through the mine field. Once more he signals the Brooklyn to proceed. But Captain Alden, shaken by the sudden sinking of the Tecumseh, thinks he sees mines in his path and begins to back water, signaling the flagship, “Torpedoes ahead!” For a moment Farragut hesitates. He will later write that he is praying, and “as if in answer a voice commanded, ‘Go on!’” Then the admiral yells a command that is variously reported but will enter legend as “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!” Brushing by the Brooklyn, the Hartford moves into the mine field with all guns blazing at Fort Morgan. Finally, the Brooklyn lurches forward behind the flagship, and the rest of the flotilla follows. The fleet moves on through the mine field, braving fire from both the fort and the enemy vessels in the bay. Sailors below decks on the Hartford and the Richmond can hear their ships’ hulls bumping against torpedoes, but not one of the mines explodes; their primer tubes have probably been corroded by long exposure in salt water. All of Farragut’s vessels make it through, though some are badly shot up. The Oneida, dead in the water with her boiler knocked out and her wheel ropes cut, is towed into Mobile Bay by her consort, the Galena.

Inside Fort Morgan, General Page is chagrined that the Federals have slipped past his stronghold, but he remains confident that they are entering a trap. And so it seems. Just as the Hartford clears the narrows, the Confederate flotilla attacks the flagship. Admiral Buchanan heads the Tennessee straight for Farragut’s flagship. But the ironclad is too slow to catch the nimble Hartford. Quickly, Buchanan swerves toward the Richmond and the Brooklyn as they steam out of the mine field. The Tennessee puts two shells into the Brooklyn’s hull, killing several sailors. The Richmond fires three full 11-gun broadsides at the ram, but the rounds that hit simply bounce off the ironclad’s thick hide.

Meanwhile, the little Confederate gunboat Selma is boldly shadowing the Hartford and raking her decks with deadly fire. Lieutenant Commander James E. Jouett of the Metacomet, the fastest Federal vessel, requests permission to cut his ship loose from the Hartford so that she can attack the Selma. Farragut assents, and the Metacomet gives chase, her guns belching fire. The Selma, outclassed, flees into shallow waters to avoid her pursuer. Aboard the Metacomet, a leadsman warns the captain that the ship is entering waters too shallow for her. In reply, Jouett orders: “Call the man in. he is only intimidating me with his soundings.” The Metacomet presses on and overtakes the Selma. The Federal gunners go to work, blasting the Selma’s deck, killing eight men and wounding seven. Then the Confederate captain raises the white flag.

While the Metacomet is cornering her prey, the Tennessee is working her way along the line of Federal ships. She tries to ram several of them, but the clumsy giant keeps missing the target. As if in frustration, she puts into safe harbor under the guns of Fort Morgan. By now, most of the paired Federal ships have been uncoupled, and several set off in pursuit of the Confederate gunboats Morgan and Gaines. The Morgan takes shelter under the guns of the fort and will escape to the city of Mobile once night falls. The Gaines is less fortunate. She is mortally wounded by a shot through the hull, and her crew scuttles her as they flee.

Farragut, finding himself with no one to fight, anchors the battered Hartford four miles up the bay, and most of his fleet come to rest near him. The admiral orders his men to be fed the breakfast he promised them last night; it is just 8:30 am, only thirty minutes behind his own schedule. But before they have drunk their coffee, someone shouts, “The ram is coming!” The return of the Tennessee is a bold but foolhardy act. Buchanan has every reason to stay put and meet the Federal fleet with the full backing of the guns of Fort Morgan. Instead, he deliberately takes on a whole flotilla, challenging 157 guns with his six. What has prompted this skillful veteran to take such inordinate risks? Perhaps the galling sight of Farragut and his command riding at ease on Buchanan’s home waters. Perhaps the lingering theory, persistent though often disproven, that ironclads are invincible. Certainly, hubris is involved. Months before, Buchanan had remarked of the Tennessee: “Everybody has taken it into their heads that one ship can whip a dozen, and if the trial is not made, we who are in her are damned for life.” As Farragut watches his admired enemy approach, he says, “I did not think Old Buck was such a fool.”

For the moment, Buchanan ignores the slow-moving monitors; it is the wooden ships that will have to bear the brunt of the attack. Farragut orders the iron-prowed Monongahela and the swift Lackawanna to “run down the ram.” The Tennessee attempts to evade the two attackers and close in on the Hartford. But before she reaches her target, the Monongahela and then the Lackawanna smash at full speed against the ram. The Monongahela’s iron prow is broken off, and she takes several shots from the Tennessee. The Lackawanna is also badly damaged in the collision, and as she pulls back, the Tennessee sends two shots through her. The Confederate ship, barely scratched, resumes her slow pursuit of the Hartford. This time the two flagships almost meet head on; they scrape past each other, port bow to port bow. At point-blank range, the Hartford blasts the Tennessee. Her solid shot merely dents the ram and then glances off her beveled flank. The ironclad fires back, but because of defective primers only one of her guns discharges. That single shell kills five men and wounds eight aboard the Hartford. By now the entire Federal flotilla is converging on the Tennessee, pounding her with broadsides, maneuvering for a chance to slam into her. The ram turns this way and that, parrying each blow and inflicting damage on each attacker. But always the Hartford remains Buchanan’s primary target, and always it is Farragut who seeks most avidly to deal the Confederate her deathblow. In one round of their struggle, the Hartford wheels in an attempt to strike the Tennessee broadside. Instead, the Federal flagship is struck amidships by the Lackawanna on a ramming run. The blow is tremendous, cracking and opening the Hartford’s hull. For a moment it seems that the flagship will go down, and there are panicky shouts of “Save the admiral!” But Farragut inspects the damage and is reassured to find that the split in the hull begins a few inches above the waterline. He orders the Hartford to go after the ram once more.

Although the Tennessee appear to be holding her own, the guns of the flotilla are beginning to find the weak spots in her carapace. The ironclad’s hull and casemate remain intact, but a Federal round cripples the mechanism that opens and shuts the gunports. As a mechanic struggles outside the vessel to open one of the gunports, an 11-inch shell from the monitor Chickasaw mashes him to a pulp against the iron. The final blow comes when a shell from the Chickasaw smashes the Tennessee’s exposed rudder chain; now the ram cannot be steered. Aboard the ironclad, Admiral Buchanan learns the bad news secondhand. He is lying in his cabin, racked with pain from a leg broken by a ricocheting bolt. Captain James D. Johnston comes down to tell him that the ship is totally disabled, and he grits out an answer through clenched teeth: “Well, Johnston, if you cannot do them any further damage, you had better surrender.” Johnston stops the engine and raises a white flag. The USS Ossipee sends over a small boat to accept the surrender and carry the defeated admiral’s sword back to the victor.

The Tennessee has lost two men killed and nine wounded, bringing the number of Confederate casualties to 32. On the Federal side, 170 men are wounded and 145 are dead, including those who went down in the Tecumseh. With the Tennessee’s defeat, and Farragut’s fleet in Mobile Bay and 5,500 Federal troops near Fort Gaines, the Confederate Fort Powell, guarding a secondary bay entry, bombarded by USS Chickasaw, is evacuated come nightfall. Though the other two forts continue to hold out, Farragut’s success at the entrance to Mobile Bay has an immediate impact. With this victory, the entire Gulf Coast east of the Mississippi is closed to shipping and blockade runners. Now the only major Confederate seaport left open is Wilmington, North Carolina. To seal it, the Federals will have to conquer a bastion that is widely considered the most strongly fortified position in the world.


General Grant knows that Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton is likely to disapprove of the appointment of Sheridan to higher command, thinking the cavalryman too young. And he expects Stanton and Halleck to resist the idea of having a Federal army chase the Confederates deep into the Shenandoah—let alone advance south of the enemy. “It seemed to be the policy of General Halleck and Secretary Stanton,” Grant will later write, “to keep any force sent there, in pursuit of the invading army, moving right and left so as to keep between the enemy and our capital.” But now Grant has powerful support for his views. Back in Washington, Lincoln pronounces Grant’s orders concerning Sheridan to “follow [Early] to the death” are “exactly right,” then offers his top general a bit of prudential wisdom. Do not count on the War Department, he writes, to help prosecute a vigorous campaign in the Shenandoah. “I repeat to you it will neither be done nor attempted, unless you watch it every day and hour and force it.”

Lincoln’s advice falls on receptive ears. Two hours after receiving it, Grant is aboard a steamer heading north. This evening, he strides into General Hunter’s headquarters at Monocacy Junction, 32 miles northwest of Washington. Grant’s first question: Where is the enemy? Hunter has no idea. This is neither new nor entirely Hunter’s fault. He has been trying to deal with an agile enemy for more than a month while receiving conflicting orders from Washington. And now Halleck has sent him every infantry unit within reach, including most of two corps, VI and XIX Corps. Faced with organizing an army swollen to about 30,000 men, Hunter has had little time to determine the location of Early’s men.

Grant doesn’t know where Early is either, but he knows how to find out. He orders a concentration of all the Federal forces near Harpers Ferry. If Early is still in Maryland or Pennsylvania, then the Federals will be south of him and can cut him off. If not, they can chase him south through the Shenandoah Valley. The general in chief want Early stopped, and he is going to make sure it happens. Grant writes out lengthy instructions for Hunter. “Nothing should be left to invite the enemy to return. Take all provisions, forage and stock wanted for the use of your command. Such as cannot be consumed, destroy.” But, he adds, “I do not mean that houses should be destroyed.” The moment that Hunter learns he is to be merely the department administrator and is to pass orders to Sheridan for execution, he asks to be relieved. Grant calls Hunter a “brave old soldier,” saying his willingness to stand aside is selfless and patriotic. But he immediately grants Hunter’s request.


Sherman determines again to try to cut the railroad below Atlanta with his infantry. To do so, he shifts John Schofield’s Army of the Ohio counterclockwise from his left flank, northeast of Atlanta, to a position on Howard’s right near Utoy Creek, a couple of miles southwest of Ezra Church. This morning, Schofield with 12,000 men spearhead the strike against the Macon & Western Railroad. Sharp fighting along Utoy Creek near Atlanta and confusion in the Federal command thwart Schofield in his attempt to edge south of Atlanta along the western fringe.


On the front along the Potomac, northwest of Washington, skirmishing breaks out at Keedysville, Williamsport, and Hagerstown as Confederates once more enter Maryland in a brief foray. A skirmish at Huttonsville, West Virginia, also marks the minor fighting between Early’s men and the pursuing Federals. At Petersburg a Confederate mine explodes in front of the Federal XVIII Corps. Other skirmishing occurs at Cabin Point, Virginia; near Remount Camp, Arkansas; at Olive Branch, Doyal’s Plantation, and Concordia Bayou, Louisiana.

The Radical Republican elements in Congress open their campaign against President Lincoln. Representative Henry Winter Davis of Maryland and Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio issue, in the New York Times, what will become known as the Wade-Davis Manifesto. In answer to Lincoln’s proclamation on his pocket veto of the Radical reconstruction plan, the authors say, “it is their right and duty to check the encroachments of the Executive on the authority of Congress....” They accuse Lincoln of personal ambition in refusing to sign the Wade-Davis bill. Also charging the President with attempting to make, not execute, the laws, they claim “the authority of Congress is paramount and must be respected.”

[Doug64]

August 6, Saturday

Things are falling rapidly into line for the Federal campaign against the Shenandoah Valley. Sheridan arrives at Monocacy Junction today and is admonished by Grant to “drive Early out of the Valley and to receive orders from no live man but Grant himself.” As the Federals begin to concentrate around Harpers Ferry, most of Jubal Early’s soldiers are north of the Potomac, near Sharpsburg and Hagerstown, loading their wagons with just-harvested local wheat. Early quickly pulls his men and supply wagons back across the Potomac to Martinsburg and then twelve more miles to Bunker Hill. From there he can range forward to cut the B & O Railroad and startle the North whenever he wishes, or he can fall backbefore any strong Federal advance.


Outside Atlanta, yesterday’s delay proves costly for Schofield’s advance, his main attack only getting underway this morning; the interval enables the Confederates to extend their defenses southward. When Schofield move forward, he finds William Bate’s division, newly transferred from Atlanta, blocking the way in a strongly entrenched line. In the resulting Battle of Utoy Creek, Schofield loses roughly 300 men before calling off the assault. Although one of Schofield’s divisions flanks Bate out of his position late in the afternoon, the Confederates merely fall back to their new line of fortifications at the railroad. Hood is rapidly extending his defenses to East Point, and Sherman decides not to try to outstretch the Confederates to the right. “The enemy can build parapets faster than we can march,” Sherman writes Thomas.


With Fort Powell on the coast of Mobile Bay evacuated by the Confederates, Chickasaw bombards Fort Gaines today. Confederate cruiser Tallahassee leaves Wilmington, North Carolina, for a three-week cruise, during which she will take more than thirty prizes. Elsewhere, the fighting is at Indian Village and Plaquemine, Louisiana. Federals scout in Saline County, Missouri, and an expedition by Federals from Little Rock to Little Red River, Arkansas, lasts until the 16th. Early pulls back south of the Potomac again, due to threats to his rear.

[Doug64]

August 7, Sunday

The Lincoln Administration officially merges the four military departments into the Middle Military Division and places Sheridan in full command. Sheridan also takes the reins of what will become known as the Army of the Shenandoah. His force will consist of about 37,000 men when fully assembled. Sheridan’s infantry include General Horatio Wright’s veteran VI Corps, one division and a portion of another from General William Emory’s XIX Corps, and General George Crook’s division-sized Army of West Virginia—which is officially redesignated VIII Corps. Sheridan brought with him from the Army of the Potomac two divisions of cavalry that, with William Averell’s division, constitute a corps. Ignoring the fact of Averell’s seniority, Sheridan names as his chief of cavalry one of the several young officers who have come with him: Brigadier General Alfred T.A. Torbert, whom Sheridan knew at West Point.

Averell’s Federal cavalry pursue Early’s raiders and surprise them with a dawn attack near Moorefield, West Virginia. The Confederates are routed, suffering more than 600 casualties and the loss of four guns and almost 700 horses. This is a damaging blow to Early’s cavalry, already understrength.


Fort Gaines in Mobile Bay surrenders to the Federal army on Dauphin Island. Colonel Charles D. Anderson of Fort Gaines is censured by his superiors for raising the white flag. They believe he should have continued fighting and overrule his surrender.


Skirmishes erupt at the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi; at Enterprise and near Huntsville, Missouri. There are affairs near Fort Lyon, Colorado Territory, and at Grand Bayou, Florida. A two-day Federal scout from Independence into La Fayette County, Missouri, operate against guerrillas. Confederates raid into Union County, Tennessee.

In Washington, Grant, Halleck, and Stanton confer with the President.

President Davis is concerned over the personality conflicts between General Hood and General Hardee in Atlanta.

[Doug64]

August 8, Monday

After considerable confusion among Confederate authorities, Fort Gaines finally surrenders to Federal forces on Dauphin Island in Mobile Bay, but Fort Morgan remains in Confederate hands. Skirmishing occurs at Fairfax Station, Virginia; Salem, Kentucky; and La Fayette, Tennessee. Federal scouts against Amerinds operate from Salina to Mulberry Creek, Kansas; on the Little Missouri in Dakota Territory; and from Camp Anderson to Bald Mountain, California.